Marshall Nurseries

The nursery's ash met a beetle from Asia. The emerald ash borer, first identified in the United States near Detroit in 2002, was confirmed in Nebraska on June 8, 2016, in a tree in Pulaski Park in southeast Omaha, and the state barred ash nursery stock and hardwood firewood from leaving Douglas, Sarpy, Cass, Washington and Dodge counties. Nebraska has an estimated 44 million ash trees, and ash make up 16 percent of city trees on average, up to 40 percent in some towns. The Nebraska Forest Service put the state's coming losses near $1 billion.

What the plaque says

Marshall Nurseries Brothers George and Chester Marshall founded Marshall Brothers in 1887. Incorporated as Marshall Nurseries in 1916, the tree nursery survived for more than a century, bringing prosperity to Arlington and influencing horticulture throughout the country. The company's operations grew with its reputation, opening nurseries in Omaha, Colorado Springs, and Denver. Locally, the nursery employed more than 100 people, including a large number from the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. The nurseries supplied much of the original land- scaping for the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln and for the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha. The nursery's honors ranged from winning a statewide 'big tree' competition in 1963 to winning the Best Fruit Display at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. Marshall Nurseries may be best known for the creation of the Marshall Seedless Green Ash tree (Fraxinus pennsylvanica 'Marshall'). For many years the Marshall Ash was the most common green ash cultivar in the United States. Marshall Nurseries closed in 1994, but its legacy lives on through the lives it touched and the trees it planted. John Camden, Sr. AHS History Honors Nebraska State Historical Society, 2018

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Atkinson State Historical Park — 15 mi
  The first U.S. Army post west of the Missouri, a garrison town of more than a thousand people on Council Bluff from 1820 to 1827, rebuilt on its own foundations.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 21 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 23 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.

More markers nearby

• Brewster Cemetery — 6.8 mi
• Platte River History — 7.2 mi
• Dodge County Poor Farm — 9.6 mi
• Fremont, Nebraska — 9.8 mi