High Plains Horticulture: A History

2: Trees for the High Plains

19 p N ebraskans take their trees very seriously. By an act of 1873, the state legislature provided that any person who willfully and maliciously injured or destroyed any trees, valued at thirty-five dollars or more, on the property of another was subject to imprisonment in the penitentiary, hard labor for no less than one year or more than ten years, and liable for double damages to the injured party. In Nebraska, state historian Everett Dick observed, one could plead self-defense for shooting someone and get away with it, “but no such subterfuge could be claimed by a tree mutilator.”1 Until 1945, Nebraska’s official nickname was “Tree Planters’ State,” in recognition of tree-planting activities such as the institution of Arbor Day, founded in 1872, inspired by J. Sterling Morton; passage of the Timber Culture Act in 1873, sponsored by U.S. Senator Phineas W. Hitchcock of Nebraska; and establishment of the first and only artificial national forest near Halsey in 1902, promoted by Professor Charles Bessey. The legislature later changed Nebraska’s nickname to “Cornhusker State” in recognition of the 2 Trees for the High Plains 20 Trees for the High Plains University of Nebraska football team, which by 1945 had changed its name from “Bugeaters” to “Cornhuskers.” Long before football became Nebraska’s civic religion, the state legislature had promoted the planting of trees for purposes of windbreaks, orchards, woodlots, and beautification. By an act of 1869, the legislature confirmed property tax exemption for tree planting, allowing up to $100 exemption annually for five years to citizens planting one or more acres with woodlot trees no more than twelve feet apart and providing an additional $50 exemption for every acre planted in fruit trees. Two years later the legislature encouraged private owners of town lots to plant trees along public rights-of-way by levying a special tax of $1 to $5 per year for each lot adjacent to a street not planted. The goal was to line all Nebraska streets with shade trees within four years. Furthermore, the 1871 legislature made stockmen liable for damages caused by their herds on cultivated lands, broadly defined to include forest trees, fruit trees, and hedgerows.2 Therein was fired an early volley in the contest between nomadic cattlemen and permanent settlers in western Nebraska. Initiative for tree legislation and promotion of tree planting came from the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture and, in particular, from the State Horticultural Society, which grew out of the former. During the 1869 state fair, “friends of horticulture” gathered at the Board of Agriculture office to establish the Nebraska State Horticultural Society. The society was formally incorporated and recognized in 1871 by the legislature, with an appropriation of $2,000 to the State Board of Agriculture designated for support of the society’s activities. Robert Furnas and J. Sterling Morton were among the twenty-three founding members. Its overall purpose: “the promotion of Pomology, Arboriculture, Floriculture, and Gardening.”3 At the beginning, society activities centered first on determining by trial and error which fruit varieties purchased in nurseries east of the Missouri River did best in Nebraska and then on displaying those successes both within and outside the state. In 1873, for example, Morton used his position as a real estate promoter for the Burlington and Missouri Railroad to convince the railroad to provide free transportation in a specially built car for Nebraska-grown fruit to an exposition in Boston.4 While the earliest fruit-growing successes—apples, pears, peaches, grapes, plums—occurred in southeastern Nebraska and not on the High Plains, the membership of the society did include individuals interested in understanding the horticultural possibilities of the High Plains. Preeminent among them was Charles S. Harrison (1832–1919), a preacher-horticulturist who had emigrated from north-central Illinois to York, about fifty miles west of Lincoln, Trees for the High Plains 21 between the 97th and 98th meridians. There, he created his own horticultural experiment farm, and for nearly a half century he crisscrossed the High Plains as a speaker on horticultural topics and served as a frequent contributor to Field and Farm, a Denver-based newspaper—always as a missionary for horticulture in the arid West. In 1872, Harrison won first prize in the inaugural essay competition sponsored by the Nebraska State Horticultural Society. His “Essay on Tree Culture” addressed the question of why Nebraskans should plant...