A Route 66 enthusiast, with the help of a gardening group, plan to plant 3,200 trees along Route 66 to honor veterans, including more than 100 along the Mother Road in Barstow, California.
The Desert Dispatch newspaper in Barstow had some of the details:
Together with the Incredible Edible Community Garden (IEGC) organization, Conkle is getting ready to kick off the Route 66 Veterans Corridor memorial tree project soon. Funded by a $1 million grant from CalFire, the multi-year project will honor military vets by planting over 3,000 trees along sections of Route 66 in the county.
“In essence, each tree will honor a veteran in our community,” IEGC Director Mary Petit said during Monday’s City Council meeting. […]
The trees, which Conkle said will be primarily oak trees with other varieties, will include a memorial for local veterans that consists of a concrete box embedded into the ground. A dog tag with the name, rank, branch of military and years of service will be inside the box, Conkle said, while a second dog tag will be given to the veteran or veteran’s family. A GPS device will also be included.
“That way, someone that lives across the country can look up the coordinates and go see Grandpa’s tree,” Conkle said, by way of example.
The first tree planting along Route 66 will take place next month in Fontana, California. Conkle told the newspaper he wants the Barstow planting to coincide when the Military Vehicle Preservation Association rolls into town Oct. 11 during its Route 66 convoy.
In an email, Conkle said Barstow will receive about 130 trees for downtown and a pocket park. The idea is to not only offer a living memorial for a departed veteran, but bring beauty and shade in that high-desert town.
The entire Route 66 tree-planting project is projected to take about three years, although that’s dependent on funding.
The project brings to the Dutch arborist who used Groasis Waterboxxes to plant trees along Route 66 in Galena, Kansas, and a few other nearby towns in 2015. It’s difficult for trees to grow in Galena because of waste from the long-ago lead-mining operations. However, the Waterboxxes were designed to help along trees planted in polluted or harsh climates.
(Image of a newly planted tree by Michael Allen via Flickr)
Meine Hochachtung für soviel Initiative gegenüber den Veteranen! Tolle Idee!
I’m a USAF veteran from Chambless, California.