Arbor Lodge

The son who rebuilt the house made his fortune in salt. Joy Morton went to work for a Chicago salt distributor in 1880, owned the firm by 1886 and incorporated it as the Morton Salt Company in 1910, serving as president until 1930. He backed the inventor Howard Krum in the venture that became the Teletype Corporation and sat on the Chicago Plan Commission for twenty-five years. In 1922 he began the Morton Arboretum on 178 acres beside his estate at Lisle, Illinois, a collection of temperate-zone trees and shrubs that has grown to 1,700 acres.

What the plaque says

Arbor Lodge The stately, 52-room mansion was completed in 1903 by Joy Morton, oldest son of J. Sterling and Caroline Morton. The Mortons' first home in Nebraska, a log cabin at Bellevue, was built on their arrival in December 1854. Sometime between 1855 and 1858, Mortons moved to Nebraska City and built a frame home, which was remodeled periodically. After his father died in 1902, Joy inherited the frame house and further remodeled and enlarged it as Arbor Lodge to its present size and Neo-colonial appearance. For 20 years, Joy and his family used the lodge as a summer retreat. In 1923 he donated it to the State of Nebraska to be preserved as a monument to his parents. J. Sterling Morton and his wife Caroline were nature lovers, and it isn't surprising that soon after completing their first home on a treeless tract west of Nebraska City that they set to work adorning their surroundings with trees, shrubs, and an orchard. While Morton's contributions to politics, journalism, and industry were not inconsiderable, he is known to the world primarily as the founder of Arbor Day. Nebraska Game and Parks Commission Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park — steps away
  J. Sterling Morton's estate in Nebraska City, a four-room house of 1855 grown to 52 rooms among the trees he planted, home of the man who proposed Arbor Day in 1872.
• Brownville — 23 mi
  A Missouri River town of 1854 that bet on a railroad and lost, kept its arts through the decline, and now has Nebraska's oldest repertory theatre and a 1932 steam dredge on the bank.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 33 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.

More markers nearby

• Nebraska City — 0.7 mi
• Mayhew Cabin, 1855 — 0.8 mi
• The Kregel Windmill Factory — 1.0 mi
• Russell, Majors, & Waddell House — 1.0 mi