The American chestnut was a dominant tree species in Wilkes County and elsewhere in the eastern U.S. before it was decimated by a blight in the early 1900s.
About 50 people spent most of Thursday planting about 650 hybrid chestnut tree seedlings near the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ W. Kerr Scott Reservoir as part of a comeback effort in several states coordinated by the American Chestnut Foundation (TACF). Continue reading this article written by Caitlin Dunn of the Wilkes Journal-Patriot newspaper.