'The Northeast Wants To Be A Forest'

In the years just before the Civil War, the Connecticut landscape was radically different than it is today.

It was an open, agrarian landscape, a patchwork of farms with few mature trees. A farm woodlot often was little more than a cluster of young, spindly trees.

Those mid-century years were years of enormous change, however, even if they were but a hint of what was to become a complete make-over of the Connecticut landscape.

With a boom in farming in states to the west like Ohio, where many Connecticut farmers resettled in the 19th Century, and the emergence of railroads to move crops quickly over long distances, agriculture slowly declined in Connecticut and continued to do so into the 21st century. Cropland and pastures were abandoned. Trees sprouted in the old fields.

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/courant-250/moments-in-history/hc-250-connecticut-landscape-p2-20140706,0,1318533.story

And now we are the #1 for urban forest.