Two hundred years ago, a squirrel might've traveled for dozens of miles through Tennessee's forests without ever touching the ground.
Folk lore even claimed a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic to the Mississippi without touching the dirt floor.
Among those forests stood the American chestnut, growing up to 100 feet tall with a trunk diameter of 5-10 feet.
It was one of the most common and important trees in the eastern United States—feeding wildlife, feeding people, and shaping entire ecosystems.
Then a fungal blight arrived.
Within a few decades, somewhere between 3-4 billion trees were gone.
Today, most people in Tennessee couldn't recognize a mature American chestnut in a photo.
That's a remarkable thing when you consider how common the tree once was.
