American Chestnut was once a climax forest tree in the Oak-
Chestnut dry woodlands of the eastern United States, but since
the recognition of the Chestnut blight in1904 in New York, the
entire forest population has been destroyed. Most of the intact,
living trees in the wild were gone by the 1950's, and all that
remains today are a few stump sprouts that still linger
(attaining heights of about 25 feet before they succumb to the
fungus). Breeding programs that have introduced resistance genes
from Japanese and Chinese Chestnuts into moderately resistant
strains of American Chestnut have met with some success, but the
ultimate goal of large scale re-introduction into forests will
not occur for some time, if ever. In Ohio, the central counties
of the state on a north-south line marked the most westward
boundary of the American Chestnut habitat in the state. American
Chestnut was predominately located in the eastern half of Ohio,
where the soils are more acidic. Its nuts were a staple food of
the Native Americans