The American Chestnut tree was once the predominate hard word tree in Appalachia. It was a great source on lumber for furniture and buildings, chestnut fence post resisted rotting in the ground better than any other wood and, the chestnut were an important food for humans and cattle. Many Appalachian families derived much of their income from harvesting the nuts every year.
In 1904 the New York botanical garden imported an Asian chestnut tree and with it a fungal disease called chestnut blight. By 1916 the blight spread to every tree in our forests and by 1950 the trees were gone.
Today there is hope to bring these giant trees back to our land by interbreeding blight resistant trees from overseas with American Chestnut trees - the result will be a tree similar to the original American chestnut tree but immune from blight. This effort is working but it will take years before results will be widespread.
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| The range of the American Chestnut tree circa 1900 |
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| These trees were forest giants. |
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| "under the spreading Chestnut tree" (from a famous poem) |
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| I told you they were big! |
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| Many chestnut trees were very straight with no limbs for 40 or 50 feet making them great for lumber. |
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| Some chestnut trees were so large than the lumber from one tree could completely fill a railroad car. |
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| The chestnut blight appears like this on the outside of the bark, but the real damage is underneath. |
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| Many old stumps are still left in our forests over 100 years latter, but the new shoots that come from them die of blight in a few years |
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| Entire forests died - thousands of acres. |
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| The American Chestnut fruit was a highly valued food for humans and livestock. It was know for its sweetness |
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