Connecticut
Related: About this forum'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.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)We've an invasion of video game landscapers who want nature to match.
Sad turn of events, the former urban generation really valued native plants and trees.
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)which WAS a forest for a long time...
much of the land was cultivated by the American Indians, but when diseases and warfare wiped them out, a lot of the continents reverted to forest.
eppur_se_muova
(37,500 posts)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Michigan_Fire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Huron_Fire_of_1871
The fires around Peshtigo, WI, were reported to have burned away even the topsoil, so that the forests would take centuries to recover. http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780805072938
Demeter
(85,373 posts)This was 50+ years before our family got to US, let alone Michigan, so I had no knowledge...
Response to NutmegYankee (Original post)
demigoddess This message was self-deleted by its author.
NutmegYankee
(16,314 posts)New England isn't even great farming terrain as it's hilly and very rocky soil.
lululu
(301 posts)Fly over it and darn near the whole state looks like a forest, except the beaches.
OF course, in a few decades most of it will be underwater.
mackerel
(4,412 posts)Maybe Connecticut goes on my list.