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1. It was the dominant plant in a relatively stable and permanent community of plants and animals. In ecological terms, such a community is said to be in a “climax” condition—the end result of a long successional process. 2. The sweet nuts were the staple food of many types of wildlife, much favored by deer, turkeys, and squirrels. 3. As a timber tree, the chestnut had many desirable characteristics. _ It grew rapidly, with a straight, tall stem, on a variety of sites. Its wood was easily split for rails, shakes, or firewood. 4. The bark of the chestnut was rich in tannin, supporting numerous local leather-making businesses.
5. Hundreds of acres of land—described in contemporary accounts as “wasteland”—was managed as orchard land, for the production of Sweet Chestnuts for the market. The chestnut was prolific and, properly cared for, could produce abundant crops. One fellow in the late nineteenth century told of an old fence-line on his “chestnut farm” in Pennsylvania, where he grafted a variety known as the Paragon Chestnut to existing native chestnut sprouts: "Stones from the field on cither side of this had been thrown along a gully that existed there at one time. In that row, in which there are altogether about 29 trees, three years ago there matured nine and a half
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