Why is Earth Day on April 22?

The first Earth Day – April 22, 1970 – marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Approximately 20 million Americans, especially on college campuses, participated in a national teach-in on environmental issues and protests against environmental deterioration on the first Earth Day. It’s hard to imagine it now, but the first Earth Day was a revelation to many, a way not only of raising consciousness about environmental issues but also of bringing together separate groups that had been fighting separately against issues including oil spills, pollutions from factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, the loss of wilderness, air pollution and more. Since then, Earth Day is always celebrated on April 22. But why April 22?

J. Sterling Morton was a Nebraska pioneer, a writer and editor for Nebraska’s first newspaper, and later secretary of the Nebraska Territory. He advocated planting trees in what was then a dusty and treeless prairie. At a meeting of the State Board of Agriculture in January 1872, Morton proposed that Nebraska citizens set aside April 10 as a day to plant trees. He suggested offering prizes as incentives for communities and organizations that planted the most trees. It’s said that Nebraskans planted about one million trees on that first Arbor Day in 1872. Ten years later, in 1882, Nebraska declared Arbor Day as a legal holiday and the date was changed to Morton’s birthday, April 22. Arbor Day grew to become a national observance. I can recall learning about it as a child in the 1950s and ’60s.

It seemed natural to schedule April 22, 1970 – Arbor Day – as the first Earth Day. Today, a common practice in celebration of Earth Day is still to plant new trees.

Bottom line: Why do we celebrate Earth Day on April 22? The date stems from an earlier observance, Arbor Day. And the date of Arbor Day was set due to the birthday of J. Sterling Morton, a Nebraska pioneer and journalist, who launched the first Arbor Day in 1872.