962 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Courtesy Pcnna. Chestnut Blight Commission. 



A CHESTNUT SHINGLE MILL 



While seventh on the list of woods used for shingles, chestnut is the leading hardwood used for that 

 purpose, its nearest competitor being oak. Shingles made from it are very durable and weather to 

 an attractive shade. These shingles sell locally for from $2.50 to $3.75 a thousand. 



same train travel goods shipped in boxes and barrels 

 made of chestnut boards and staves. Even the leather 

 for our shoes is tanned in an extract made from chest- 

 nut wood. In the Fall we munch hot roasted chestnuts 

 and many housewives feel that they are a necessary part 

 of dressings of various kinds. At last when the tree can 

 serve us no longer in any other way it forms the basic 

 wood onto which oak and other woods are veneered to 

 make onr coffins. 



ITS EARLY HISTORY 



The early settlers encountered 

 chestnut pretty well up and down . 

 the eastern coast ^rf the United 

 States, and when food was 

 scarce, if we are to believe our 

 school histories, they were glad 

 to make use of its succulent nuts 

 as a serious part of their diet, 

 even as did the Indians. Sur- 

 rounded as they were by an un- 

 surpassed wealth of timber, far 

 in excess of their immediate 

 needs, the earliest colonists were 

 able to pick and choose, taking 

 only the best and finest for their 

 homes, using the rest for fenc- 

 ing and fuel, or burning it to 

 rid the fields of its presence. In 

 early New England white pine 

 was the chief building material. 

 Later when the local pine was 

 exhausted it was necessary ti> 

 fall back upon native hardwoods. 

 Oak and chestnut then began to 



be used and many Revolutionary 

 and early nineteenth century 

 houses were built of hewn oak 

 and chestnut frames, oak floors, 

 and chestnut sidings and shin- 

 gles. Later the opening up of 

 the virgin pineries of northern 

 Xew N'ork, Pennsylvania and 

 the Lake States flooded the 

 country with white pine and 

 local woods ceased to be so 

 largely used for biilding, par- 

 ticularly in the cities, but coun- 

 try houses and barns are even 

 yet frequently framed of local 

 hardwood timbers, and one does 

 not have to go back many years 

 to find barns built of heavy 

 hand-hewn chestnut beams put 

 logetlier with wooden pins. 

 Building of such construction 

 will outlast the modern framed 

 huildings built of lighter mate- 

 rials and put together with nails. 

 In the Appalachian Mountains, 

 even as far north as Pennsylvania, to this day log cabins 

 are built of chestnut logs, sometimes in the round, some- 

 times hewn square. 



The earliest use of chestnut still remains one of its 

 important ones, for chestnut has been a fencing wood 

 since Colonial times. Few woods split lengthwise easier 

 and straighter than chestnut, or are lighter or more 

 durable. Fence rails made of it will last a life time. 

 The early settlers built their fences of chestnut rails, 



Courtesy Pcnna. Chestnut Blight Commission. 



CHESTNUT FOR TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH POLES 



Next to cedar, chestnut is the leading wood for poles in the total amount used annually. When the 

 advent of the telephone and telegraph created a demand for poles it did not take long before the 

 value of the chestnm was realized and east of the Mississippi it outranks all other woods for this 

 purpose. 



