The event allows visitors to learn about maple trees, the history of maple syrup production and the surrounding nature in an area where syrup has been made since 1919.

Visitors got to see a couple of tapped sugar maple trees and tasted the sap and syrup made on the spot by volunteers Tom and Wendy Miller, who have their own maple trees and make their own maple syrup in Granville.

“We turn mud season into syrup season,” Wendy said on Sunday.

Maple syrup-making is quite an intensive process, requiring lots of passion and sap—about 40 to 50 gallons of sap for 1 gallon of syrup, said Nancy Gregory, environmental educator at the Dawes Arboretum.

“When the sap comes out, it tastes like water… Nothing is added to make it maple syrup. Actually, things are taken away. Some of the water needs to be evaporated off,” Gregory said. “All that evaporation going on and then you do it again and again and again, and eventually you’ve boiled down the sap… We bring it to about 66% sugar content, and that’s what makes maple syrup.”

The arboretum no longer uses its own sap to produce syrup, pausing the practice in 2018 due to declining tree health. Even so, Dawes continues to hold demonstrations by volunteers. Through various activities, visitors can still explore the tradition of maple syrup production upheld by Indigenous people, pioneers and the founding Dawes family.

The founders of the arboretum, Beman and Bertie Dawes, were conservationists who purchased the property and founded Dawes Arboretum in 1929 to research and plant trees, reflecting their concern about deforestation. In 1919, the family began extracting maple syrup from sugar maple trees, which they gave as gifts to friends and relatives and did not sell commercially, Spieles said.

The Dawes family later opened maple syrup activities to the public as an event in 1966, aiming to engage people in understanding and conserving natural resources while educating visitors about trees through the tradition of maple syrup. The tradition continues today.

Maple Syrup Day is the longest-running event at the Dawes Arboretum, said historian Leslie Wagner, who worked at the arboretum for 13 years.

“Maple syrup was a tradition started by our co-founders, Beaman and Bertie Dawes, back in 1919. So we do maple syrup in honor of them,” Wagner said. “But really, this maple syrup event encompasses our entire mission: trees, nature, history.”

Activities featured at the event include a guided historical walking tour along the Maple Syrup Trail, tree tapping demonstrations, and syrup tastings—featuring maple syrup from Winding Trails Maple Syrup in neighboring Utica, Ohio, maple syrup from Vermont, hickory syrup from Pennsylvania, as well as store-bought varieties from local retailers—at the arboretum’s iconic log cabin, which has been on the property since the 1920s, Spieles said.

This year’s event also includes new activities such as crafts inside the visitor center, a historical photo slideshow from the arboretum’s archives featuring images from Dawes Maple Syrup Day over the past 60 years, and educational displays explaining why maple tree tapping and syrup production stopped, how climate change affects maple trees, how to care for any maple trees people have at home, along with discussions of how Beman Dawes’ staff produced syrup in the 1920s.