The Silver City Daily Press reported this week that a second “Moon Tree” has been planted at a school in that southwestern New Mexico city.
Moon trees have been planted around the United States, using seeds that were carried aboard various space missions, including two that went to the moon.
The first moon tree in Silver City, a sycamore, was planted in 1976 in Gough Park, near the intersection of U.S. 180 and New Mexico 90. (If you go to the historic downtown area of Silver City, you’ll drive right pastthe park.) Seeds for that tree and many others were taken into space in 1971 on the Apollo 14 mission by astronaut Stuart Roosa, a former smoke jumper who was born in Durango, CO. Roosa, the command module pilot, never made it to the moon’s surface. He orbited it while two other astronauts, Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on its surface.
The latest moon tree was one of hundreds of seeds taken aboard an unmanned Artremis mission to the moon in November of 2022. the seeds were part of a STEM education initiative between NASA and the U.S. Forest Service. The unmanned Orion spacecraft spent about four weeks traveling to orbit the moon and return to Earth.
It was fitting that the latest moon tree was planted at the elementary school named in honor of Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, an astronaut who grew up in Silver City and was from the suburb of Santa Rita. He was on the Apollo 17 mission, during which he walked on the surface of the moon. He was the next to last person to have left footsteps on it, having boarded the lunar module just before commander Eugene Cernan did. Schmitt later went on to be a U.S. Senator from New Mexico. (I included a mention of Schmitt in a recent post regarding election shenanigans in New Mexico. You can check it out at: https://aero-cordero.com/2026/10/27/new-mexico-invented-political-obfuscation/
According to what I could determine, some of the Moon trees that were planted around the United States have either been forgotten or died. Accodrding to an Associated Press story from 2019, five other moon trees In New Mexico from Roosa’s batch of seeds have died or officials are not sure exactly where they are. One of those is supposedly on the grounds of the state capitol in Santa Fe and another is at the Smokey Bear museum in Capitan. Although I could not confirm it, Silver City may be the only city in the United States to have two of the moon trees.
And at least Silver City has kept track of its original tree and I’m sure the students at Harrison Schmitt Elementary will make sure the second moon tree in their city will thrive.
Attached is a link about the moon trees, giving their locations around the United States: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/moon_tree.htm
