Ohio’s State Tree

Few state trees are as honored as Ohio’s buckeye. After all, Ohio is the Buckeye State.

Ohio’s nickname may have sprouted on September 2, 1788, at the first court of record in what was then the Northwest Territory.

It is said that Indians greeted Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, who headed the court with shouts of hetuck, hetuck, hetuck. The Indian word supposedly translates as “eye of the buck,” or “buckeye.” It was supposedly meant as a compliment, and all of Ohio eventually accepted it.

But was it really a compliment? The Indians knew that ground-up buckeyes could be used to poison fish when thrown on ponds. (The stunned fish could easily be scooped up.)

Few Ohio Indians were left by 1840. That was the year the term buckeye entered politics and became famous nationwide.

Buckeye Politics

Born in Virginia, William Henry Harrison gained fame as the victor of a major battle against Indians at Tippecanoe. Harrison settled along the Ohio River, just west of Cincinnati. He entered politics as the Whig candidate of what was then the untamed trans-Appalachian West.

An opposition newspaper taunted that Harrison “was better fitted to sit in a log cabin and drink hard cider than rule in the White House.” But Harrison’s handlers capitalized on his rough-and-ready image. They issued an engraving of Harrison seated in a rustic cabin with a barrel of cider against the wall and rows of buckeyes hanging from pegs.

In 1840, a Whig delegation rolled a buckeye log cabin on wheels into Columbus, Ohio. A “cabin-raising” fad then spread all the way to New York City.

People hadn’t yet adopted the custom of wearing campaign buttons. Instead, Harrison supporters carried buckeye canes.

The Buckeye State

By then, everyone knew that Ohioans were Buckeyes. Adopted in 1902, Ohio’s state flag features a white circle with a red center, representing its nickname as well as the “O” in Ohio. In 1953, Buckeye became Ohio’s official nickname.

Maine, the Pine Tree State, shares its state tree with Michigan and Ontario. The palmetto represents Florida, as well as South Carolina, the Palmetto State. And the peach blossom was adopted as Delaware’s state flower long before Georgia became known as the Peach State.

But Ohio alone is the Buckeye State.

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