Arbor Lodge State Historical Park & Arboretum

A 52-room mansion that belonged to J. Sterling Morton, Founder of Arbor Day. Many of the family’s original pieces fill the home. The Carriage house displays carriages used by the family. Walking trails wind through the grounds.

J. Sterling Morton was the founder of Arbor Day, an American holiday designated for planting trees. The original house, built in 1855, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was remodeled several times by the late 1800s. In 1903, Morton’s son, Joy, converted the house in the three-story, fifty-two-room, Neo-Classical Revival mansion of today. As a pioneer Nebraska journalist, politician, and leader in horticulture and conservation, J. Sterling Morton served as secretary of agriculture under President Grover Cleveland in 1893. Arbor Lodge was donated to the state of Nebraska in 1923 and is now a state historical park administered by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.