In the Rock River Valley of northern Illinois, about three miles south of the town of Oregon, a forest exists largely because one man kept planting. The individual was Frank O. Lowden, governor of Illinois from 1917 to 1921. Before and after his years in the statehouse, he treated his land as a decades-long reforestation experiment. According to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources , Lowden or his team planted an estimated 500,000 trees over several decades. That land is now Lowden-Miller State Forest in Ogle County, a public woodland of 2,291 acres that anyone can wander through, though the state only bought it in 1992 and 1993.
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