Wheeling Rotary Club member C.J. Kaiser, right, watches as Wheeling Park employees plant a tree the club sponsored at the park on Saturday.

WHEELING — To celebrate its upcoming 100-year anniversary — and in an effort to replace the many trees downed by two heavy storms in 2022 — Wheeling Park held a tree planting event Saturday.

Members of community organizations that sponsored trees and park workers gathered around plots of dirt scattered around Wheeling Park with shovels Saturday morning in what was the most recent round of 15 new trees planted in the park.

In June 2022, a pair of severe wind and rain storms, or derechos, swept across the Wheeling area, taking down hundreds of trees and causing significant damage and power outages across the county. Wheeling Park dealt with a large share of the damage with hundreds of its trees being uprooted or broken in half by the strong winds.

The year after the storm, the park got to work and started replacing the downed trees in small batches.

Now, they are close to achieving their goal of planting 100 in honor of their 100th anniversary, which is coming up at the end of May.

After another 15 trees are planted next year and eight trees the year after that, the park will have reached their goal of planting 100 trees, replacing a large portion of those torn down in the storms.

This was made possible by an Oglebay grant. The “America’s Future Trees” fund was established by Earl Oglebay’s grandson Courtney Burton to go towards management of Oglebay’s natural lands, particularly when it comes to maintaining and planting trees.

The Rotary Club of Wheeling was one of several groups to sponsor a tree in this round of plantings. Rotary club members C.J. Kaiser, Lisa Olson and Christine Carder were among some of the first on Saturday to pick up shovels and throw dirt on one of the freshly planted trees.

Olson said the planting was an opportunity to help improve Wheeling and live out the club’s mission to serve and improve the Wheeling community.

“It’s significant for the rotary club of Wheeling because we are ‘Service Above Self,’ so we believe in the heritage planting and supporting Wheeling park and the overall revitalization of the city and we want to be involved as much as we can,” Olson, the rotary’s foundation chair, said.

The plantings are also intended to support biodiversity, improve water conservation, create cleaner air, prevent erosion and support Wheeling Park’s thriving ecosystem by having more trees present on the park’s land. Carder said she feels it is important to replenish the trees that the storm took down.

“I think just to keep the park as beautiful as it is and as vibrant as it is, it’s important to replace what nature has taken,” she said.

The Wheeling Tree Board is holding another planting on Monday in celebration of Arbor Day. Members of the public are invited to join in the ceremonial planting.