American Chestnut Trees once the Pride of the Appalachia's

foreign [Music] the mighty appalachians [Music] so beautiful so vast and the billions upon billions of trees you couldn't count the trees that's in these mountains but there's one tree that stood tall above all of them it was a mighty giant and for thousands of years it dominated this appalachian all down through here all the way from maine all the way down to the mississippi [Music] just dominated these mountains now here's the american chestnut tree the original rain in green and back in its heyday and sad to say there's fewer than one thousand left out of four billion trees i'm told at one time they're all but extinct the original version and i'm out in these old woods all the time and every once in a while i run into something like this you can tell but just the way the wood formation is that it's an old american chestnut tree and this is a small still it's four foot diameter it's been cut i'd say it died i laid this on here just for skate [Music] this place was just full of them at one time but they're all gone now and back in these old mountains when they started logging they'd run into some of these old chestnut oaks american chestnuts it's just so vast just look at the size of some of them some of them was two to three hundred foot tall i was told and they put off enough nuts for all the people all the animals and so much left over just bounding up and they were some that was really monsters just look at some of these pictures amazes me now these appalachian mountains don't know where this was took at but after that blight a lot of them look like this they become a hazard they fall them down monsters i'm telling you just absolute monsters here's some old pictures amazing pictures here how big these things are [Music] now out in the open these old american chestnuts would grow like this big and bushy and they lived to be 800 years old i'm told big trees old trees too but out in the dense forest they competed with other trees for light so they would grow straight up try to get above it to get all the light they could to survive like the other trees and i mean they were mighty they went way up there [Music] they stand tall above all other trees so beautiful now don't get that confused with them just a regular chestnut tree this is a regular old chestnut oak and they live to be up to 600 years old and but they don't get nothing as tall like the american chestnut so don't confuse them with the american chestnut they're still around this one's over 200 years old right here and that old regular chestnut oak puts off acorns like this this is what the leaves look like this is what the aprons look like and when they fall off they turn a bright yellow these aprons do now humans can't eat these these animals can digest them but not man now here's the american chest they come in little pods nut pods they look like this a lot of people call them birds because they look like birds they're on the outside but they may have two three four or more nuts in it going on the tree and how good a year it was this is what they look like and a human can't eat these you can digest these real easy and people really craved them and it was a big market for it too at one time and back then when they had a good the season come in on these nuts they would have big gathering in the community and they'd go up in the woods and they picked they was such a big bounty of them that nobody was stingy about nothing that was plenty to share and i was told they'd be so many of them in some places where they low roll down a hill against an old dead tree log would just be heaps of them all i have to do is just shovel them up or put them in a in a bucket but they would be so many they'd have to drag them out on sleds like this through them old ridges and mountains i i heard it that'd be one tree would be two pickup float and they'd bring them in like this good bounties level now this is good money for the people in appalachia they made good money off this this is how they got their shoes and stuff and supplies in the winter time they took advantage of this the city people love these nuts they so good and a lot of these farmers up here in these mountains they would get their hogs up here in these mountains since there was plenty of them and they let them fatten up on them before they took them to market and then they'd round them up take them down the market they gained a lot of weight on these nuts and these things so good too i can't get a firm price but i'd say they got a lot of money out of them i've heard a lot of tails on me it's old-timers tell me but after the black come down these mountains here's what they look like i remember my dad tell me when he was little that he would see the trees the bridges was just white with trees dead tree so sad monster tree too now i reckon the blight started in 1904's when they first noticed it it come into uh they they had transported some asian chestnut trees into new york zoological gardens and imported them from asia and that's what started to block well they tried to stop it by cutting them down and all that but it was too late once it got in the air and the air streams in these mountains it just multiplied and just carried it on now the old american chestnut blight effect it's more like a canker so wrong it gets on the limbs and it just kills it here's what it looks like but it don't bother the root system it just kills the tree the limb now i remember finding one like this 30 years ago southeast kentucky down an old holler from the coal mine an old farm and it looked like this just about like this just slowly died the big part of us died but he's trying to live even found a few nuts on now like i said the root system will still live and it's trying to survive it'll keep sending sprouts up but when them sprouts get up 10 15 20 feet at the most the blight hits it again and kills it down and then it just slowly kills the tree all together it can't survive like that [Music] so what are you going to do all these trees in these mountains are dead white dangerous fire hazard so they logging anyway so they started cutting them down some of them the hard way when they first started he's a big old tree [Music] now he drug them out of these ridges and these mountains hard work these were big trees i'm telling and they really drug them out of here too when they got the rail system in any smokies anyway by the thousands drinking them out of here and they they really they really enjoyed them they made a lot of money off of these things dead trees plus other trees these logging too and it took them to the sawmill and people loved to build furniture with and house building supply and the old-timers they love these chestnut old american chestnut wood to build for their old cabin barn that wood is lice just about forever well nothing lasts forever but it lasted a long time you could see some of the old cabins these settlers build out of they're still here still intact 200 something years ago but they always told me that they wasn't good in a fireplace open fire it's bad to crack and pop shoot sparks out across the floor you know what i mean when you burn so it calls the bar real good but you could burn it in a closed stone but that was what i've always been told and the good news is they they're coming up with hybrids cross breeds and they're planting them by the thousands around the country trying to bring them back and that's so great news a lot of people's worked hard at this trying to say but the bad news is we'll not see them back like they was in our lifetime maybe our grandchildren or great-grandchildren will if it's so world last that long maybe they might see them back in these mountains like this above the skyline the monster tree of the day [Music] just think of what the native americans seen back before anybody ever come in here so i hope you enjoyed this little story it's a sad story i hate to see our trees leave so i want to thank you for watching god bless and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: DONNIE LAWS

Views: 334,410

Keywords: American Chestnut Trees once the Pride of the Appalachia's, American Chestnut tree, Appalachia History, Trees of Appalachia, Chestnut Blight, Smoky Mountains, Tennessee history, DONNIE LAWS, Appalachia Mountains, Apalachia people

Id: Nw-X_h1QO0I

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022