What happened to the American giants ?

[NE GA Pappy]

My grandpa logged the hills and hollers around White, Dawson, Pickens and Towns county. He would tell me stories about the mountains look like they were covered in snow when the chestnuts were in bloom. He logged with a team of oxen, and would spend the entire week at the lumber mill. That was back when they would transport the mill to the trees, mill it there and haul the lumber out of the woods.

I remember being a pre-teen and walking the AT across Blood Mountain and seeing all the chestnut logs laying beside the trail. They were there by the hundreds in the late 60's and early 70's.

I still know where there are a few native chestnuts in Dawson county. Most don't get much bigger than 6 or 8 inches in diameter before the blight kills them, but I do know of at least one that is 24 to 30 inches and way over 60ft tall. It blooms out every year and drops some burrs in the fall. It is on a farm place owned by a good friend of mine.

 

[DannyW]

I remember being a pre-teen and walking the AT across Blood Mountain and seeing all the chestnut logs laying beside the trail. They were there by the hundreds in the late 60's and early 70's.

I remember coming across an occasional live one when tromping across Rabun county in the 60's and 70's. And my dad always spoke of the trees, and the blight, with great reverence.

He thought so highly of the chestnut that he built a gun cabinet for my Christmas present in 1981. He used wormy chestnut and it is one of my prized possessions.

 

[basstrkr]

The paper mill in Dublin Ga started up in 1979. The Boiler House operators for this mill came from Silva, North Carolina. The paper mill there had finally shut down completely because there was more Chestnut tress to harvest or salvage.

 

[Sutallee]

My family lived in the Sutallee area of Cherokee and Bartow Counties and there were lots of American Chestnuts there in the early 1900s. My grandfather told me that the people there turned their hogs loose in the fall to fatten on the chestnuts and that they notched he hog's ears so that they could ID their animals. I know that at one time there was a earmark registry book in the Bartow County Courthouse. Reportedly, the meat from those hogs was prized for its quality.

My folks said that the chestnut wood was great for its durability and working qualities. My grandfather told me in the 1970s that he had chestnut fenceposts on his land that were still sound.

I am a retired federal bank examiner, and in the 1970s, I was assigned to a bank in Marietta. The bank CEO told me that one of the bank's offices had a living mature American Chestnut on site and that he had reported it to the UGA forestry school. The school sent agents out and collected cuttings in hopes of developing a blight resistant strain. The bank is now gone and I have never heard about any results of this effort.

 

[Ruger#3]

Appalachia is a culture region. You have the foothills and then the “Appalachian “ mountains. Both are considered Appalachia, just a different part of the region. That’s the way it’s always been explained to me.

The Appalachians stretch into Canada and down towards Alabama. If a the map shows Appalachia Mountains it shows the cultural region that runs from NY to about N. GA. Both are correct.

 

[crackerdave]

I bet that pork fattened on chestnuts was some mighty fine eatin' !

 

[Danuwoa]

I like mr Laws videos, watched the ones about Cades cove the other day

Yeah I watch his videos too.

 

[livinoutdoors]

I watched a video on a Virginia ag dept or such is really really close to having a viable tree to plant that is blight resistant.