100 years of the Morton Arboretum: How the salt maker left behind a tree sanctuary in DuPage

As the origin story goes, Joy Morton, accomplished in business, tired of city life, takes a drive out to the countryside with his friend.

They pull over to help put out a prairie fire. Morton looks around and decides to put down roots in the area.

Morton builds his family's estate near the east branch of the DuPage River. He eventually establishes the Morton Arboretum on the grounds around it.

Here's the twist: Morton was surrounded by farmland and cow pastures, hardly the setting for a tree sanctuary.

“The landscape looks very raw. It was farm fields beforehand,” said Rita Hassert, collections manager at the arboretum's Sterling Morton Library. “It was not that he came to this horticultural paradise and put a fence up around it.”

Morton signed the documents creating the arboretum nearly a century ago on Tuesday, a date that launches a yearlong celebration leading up to the centennial anniversary in 2022. Silver-haired and 67 at the time, the magnate behind another Chicago institution, Morton Salt, could have retired to a life of leisure.

But Morton saw the arboretum as a parting gift, a chance to write his own epitaph.

“This Arboretum is to be my memorial, and I believe it will be a very permanent one,” Morton wrote in 1932.

The man at the center of the arboretum's centennial commemoration dedicated the last 11 years of his life to its early development.

Thousands and thousands of trees were planted. Lakes were dug. Miles of roads and footpaths were installed.

“He was anxious to get as much done as he could while he was living,” Clarence Godshalk, the arboretum's first director, later recalled. “I think that we were pushed pretty hard in the beginning.”

In the beginning, no one could have imagined the arboretum, originally 175 acres, would grow into what it is today — a 1,700-acre natural oasis and hub of scientific research in Lisle.

'Plant trees'

As the arboretum likes to point out in its digital archives, Morton owed his love of trees to his family tree.

His father, Julius Sterling Morton, was the secretary of agriculture under President Grover Cleveland and came up with the idea for another important date on the arboretum's calendar: Arbor Day. Morton's mother, Caroline, also was an avid gardener.

His parents grew up in the heavily wooded East and, as newlyweds, moved to the open plains and prairies of what is now Nebraska in 1854.

“Trees represented a number of things to those early pioneers,” Hassert said. “It meant stability. It meant building material. It meant aesthetic beauty. It meant food for their table in some cases.”

As editor of the Nebraska City News, the family patriarch promoted a tree planting event for the first Arbor Day observance in 1872. According to newspaper accounts, Nebraskans planted an estimated 1 million trees.

“This is before social media to alert people, and I find that number just astronomical,” Hassert said.

The arboretum could not have scripted a more appropriate family motto for the Mortons: “Plant Trees.” Their guiding ethos was even engraved on the family's china and silver.

A visit with his father to the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University also might have planted the seeds for what would become Morton's legacy, Hassert said.

“When people talk about retirement projects, they're not typically talking about establishing an arboretum,” she said. “That's a long game, if you will. But he saw the value in trees.”

'Love of trees'

Morton managed to see the value in the farmland around his estate. Early photographs of the arboretum always make Hassert “chuckle” in disbelief and admiration.

“It was a remarkable time when you consider the number of things that were planted, the amount of work that was done, and the equipment they had, too,” Hassert said. “They were working with mules and horses.”

Morton had a clear vision, but Hassert doesn't see him as a micromanager. He hired Godshalk, trained as a landscape architect at the University of Michigan, and he conferred with Charlie Sprague Sargent, the head of the Harvard arboretum.

“I felt like he was someone who was trying to basically hire the best and encourage them to do their work,” Hassert said.

Their work was to create an arboretum “to increase the general knowledge and love of trees and shrubs and to bring an increase and improvement in their growth and culture,” Morton wrote in the mission statement that established his namesake arboretum on Dec. 14, 1922.

“Joy Morton had such great vision when he established the Morton Arboretum in 1922 that he envisioned this great outdoor museum of trees,” said Alicia LaVire, an arboretum vice president. “And what we experience today at the arboretum is truly that, a magnificent, beautiful outdoor museum of trees.”

The arboretum kicked off the yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary with free daytime admission Tuesday. The Sterling library is creating a special display and programs on the arboretum's origins and history as part of 100 events planned throughout the centennial year.

There's another way of paying tribute to Morton. Follow the downhill “Joy Path,” beginning at what is now the Thornhill Education Center, a favorite route of Morton's, Hassert said.

“I always like to feel like I'm walking in his footsteps,” she said.