Tucked away in the woods surrounding the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education are a few lonely citizens of a bygone world – when the American Chestnut tree filled the eastern forests from Maine to Florida…

…In fact, it was commonly said that the American Chestnut held us from the cradle to the grave: cribs and coffins were made from its wood.
And its wood was only one of many gifts, aside from its crucial role in American forests’ ecology. Its protein-packed nuts fattened hogs, fed countless rural families through the winter, and, according to Donohue, were even bartered for other goods as a sort of currency