Dawes Arboretum

In nineteen eighteen, Beman Gates Dawes, an Ohio oil entrepreneur, bought a hundred and forty acres of rolling farmland outside Newark and began planting trees. He had grown up watching his father's lumber business clear-cut the Ohio landscape and wanted to give something back. Dawes and his wife Bertie officially established the arboretum as a private foundation in nineteen twenty-nine, by which time they had planted over fifty thousand trees and the grounds had grown to nearly three hundred acres.

Dawes had made his money building the oil company that became Pure Oil, and he poured those earnings into a living laboratory open to the public. Today the arboretum covers nearly two thousand acres and remains dedicated to the mission he carved into its charter: education for young people, and pleasure for everyone.