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pet creeper, mountain pine, mountain laurel, rhododendron and mountain ash.
Blight introduced from Asia had destroyed the chestnuts that once covered 35,000 acres of the park. There was no cure for the chestnut blight but CCC workers saved the white pine from blister rust, another Asian fungus.
They treated 28,523 acres, and the Park Service continued the blister rust control program on another 14,275 acres.
GCC boys also destroyed 42,239 galls on 1,833 cedar trees in attacking the native Virginian cedar-apple rust. Another CCC camp devoted 245 “man-days” to fighting the spread of “tree of heaven,” an interloper species that was gaining ground intended for the return of native forest.
As much as the wild plants had suffered at the hands of mountain settlers, wild animals had suffered more. Gone were the beaver, the elk, the bison, the wolf, the mountain lion.
Almost gone were the bear, the mink and the deer. Raccoons, opossums, foxes and bobcats were fewer.
An interview with a mountain man from Elkwallow, included in Darwin Lambert’s legislative history of the park, tells why.
“Winter ’fore last, one trapper down Little Washington way got a dozen mink at slab piles around old sawmills — mostly brown minks brought 50 cents to a dollar, but three blacks brought $12 a piece. Black minks 15 years back was $30.”
The mountain man, Newt Sisk, said he’d never trapped a mink himself but bragged on his luck with bears.
“Bait (the traps for bear) with honey or meat — or you can track ’em in the snow and shoot. Fine meat. Tan hides and make over
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