Are there still chestnut trees in the continental US?

A modest but historic planting of several hundred little chestnuts has completed their first full growing season in the wild on U.S. Forest Service lands in Virginia, ..... vanished from the forests some 5,000 years ago — probably of a disease still unknown — and then reappeared throughout their range a few centuries later. read more

Mature trees often grew straight and branch-free for 50 feet, up to 100 feet, averaging 5 ft in diameter. For three centuries, most barns and homes east of the Mississippi River were made from it. American chestnuts were nearly wiped out by chestnut blight. read more

The total number of chestnut trees in eastern North America was estimated at over three billion, and 25% of the trees in the Appalachian Mountains were American chestnut. The number of large surviving trees over 60 cm (24 in) in diameter within its former range is probably fewer than 100. read more

If there was an “Aha!” moment in bringing American chestnuts back this far from the brink, it came around 1980 when Charles Burnham, a corn geneticist, read of the shutdown of a decades-long, failed attempt by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to breed a resistant chestnut. read more