From here I drove down to the next dirt road and headed up it a short distance to the next tree. It is actually on the same ridge about 1,700 feet from the first tree. I started out following my GPS unit as it ticked off numbers. Then of course, the batteries in the unit died. I cut across through the woods back to the Tracker. I came across a couple smaller 30 foot-range chestnuts along the way. With new batteries found rummaging in my glove compartment, I was off to find the tree. The GPS coordinates I had been given were pretty good. The tree was on the far side of a wire exclusion fence. It was obviously bigger than the first tree I had visited. It was difficult to find a good spot to see the top, but I finally found a good spot to read. I measured the height from this one vantage point through the trees along the trail.There was a pass through in the fence some distance back, but I didn't feel like walking that far. I didn't want to damage the fence by trying to climb it. I am a relatively thin guy, so I found a place to squeeze under the fence. Sliding under a stretched fence on your back was rough enough, without the prickly chestnut shell digging into my back as I slid. Anyway I made it. I measured the GPS location and the circumference of the tree. The tree was 51.75 inches cbh - over four feet around!   The results were:

Lyle Summit #1
cbh 51.75"
height 71.98 feet (rounds to 72.0 feet)

Both of these trees appeared to be healthy. I did not see signs of blight, but as I am not an expert I could have missed them.

Bark on the lower section of the Lyle Summit #2 chestnut.  The lower section of Lyle Summit #1 was similar in texture.

Smoother bark about 10 feet up the Lyle Summit #1 American Chestnut.

In anticipation of finding these trees I had been busy on the internet. The current National Champion Tree (American Forest list) is in Washington State. It is a planted tree outside the range of the blight. The figures for it are as follows:

American Chestnut Castanea dentata
Location: Washougal, WA
Circumference: 242 inches
Height: 77 feet
Spread: 77 feet
Points: 338
Most Recent Measurement: 2004
Nominator/s: Robert Van Pelt and Michael Dunn

This tree isn't that tall, but the impressive girth makes it the National Champ. It is comparable in girth and height to the large white oak on Lencer Drive just north of Cook Forest that Carl Harting and I measured last month.

In the Eastern US the tallest in the listing, not including Carl Harting's recent finds at Cook Forest, was in Massachusetts:

66.3'       2' 11.0"   Mass.    Mt. Everett (0.4 mi. southeast of summit), Mt. Everett State Reservation, Berkshire Co. Leverett & Wessels 5/26/02

On the ENTS website is a photo of a tree climber in an American Chestnut

http://www.nativetreesociety.org/galleries/climbs/tree_climbs.htm

It reads :A recent climb for the American Chestnut Foundation. The climber (Mike Riley, an employee) is ascending to do the pollination. I had bagged the female flowers two weeks earlier. He is nearing 40' up in this beautiful chestnut in Ashe County, NC which may stand 60' tall. It is about 5 feet in girth and in nearly perfect health. It has small non-lethal (yet?) cankers only in narrow branch bark ridges. I will try to get a photo of the impressive trunk of this tree. It is so smooth the bark looks very much like young black birch or cherry. Photo by Will Blozan.

A number of historical accounts of large chestnuts are listed in "Great Eastern Trees Past and Present" by Colby Rucker (2004)

http://www.nativetreesociety.org/bigtree/great_eastern_trees.htm

These accounts tell of a number of trees with great girths. One listing stated: "North Carolina: American Chestnut. Joseph S. Illick stated that a chestnut at Francis Cove, near Waynesville, Haywood County, had a trunk diameter of seventeen feet. This is considered the greatest known diameter of any eastern hardwood." Several other accounts described trees in the 8 to 12 foot diameter range. None of them talk about great height. The tallest height mentioned in any of these accounts was 75 feet.

Information on the American Chestnut Foundation website http://www.acf.org/ suggest that some chestnuts grew limb free up to 50 feet and reached heights of 100 feet. But no height numbers are given for any specific trees:

"And the trees could be giants. In virgin forests throughout their range, mature chestnuts averaged up to five feet in diameter and up to one hundred feet tall. Many specimens of eight to ten feet in diameter were recorded, and there were rumors of trees bigger still.... The tree was one of the best for timber. It grew straight and often branch-free for 50 feet. Loggers tell of loading entire railroad cars with boards cut from just one tree. Straight-grained, lighter in weight than oak and more easily worked, chestnut was as rot resistant as redwood. It was used for virtually everything - telegraph poles, railroad ties, shingles, paneling, fine furniture, musical instruments, even pulp and plywood. "

The American Chestnut Foundation is working to produce a blight resistant strain of chestnut by hybridizing American Chestnut with resistant Chinese Chestnut, and then back breeding the cross to retain the characteristics of the American Chestnut, along with the resistance of the Chinese variety. I wonder what the tallest American Chestnut is that they have found?

I can't find any reliable data (or even unreliable data) indicating the height chestnut would reach in the past. It is interesting that all of the American chestnut trees of reproductive size today are relatively short. Other tree species 80 years old may have reached 150 feet tall. Many of the tall trees from GSMNP are secondary growth from timbering operations 70- 80 years ago...

A nice overview of the history of the Chestnut and the blight is available as a PDF file from Penn State: http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/pdfs/uh167.pdf It is about 870kb in size and worth the download. The size potential described in this 4 page pdf file is essentially that the American Chestnut can reach 100 feet or more in height.

Another organization involved in trying to re-establish American chestnuts is the American Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation http://ipm.ppws.vt.edu/griffin/accf.html. The American Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation is trying to breed a resistant chestnut using only American Chestnut strains and perhaps augmenting this with other biological controls.

I believe we can find American Chestnut in the 80 foot range at least somewhere in the Central Pennsylvania area. There are many living smaller chestnut trees. We also have found several, producing nuts, in the 60's and 70's in this area. An account of another chestnut tree measured in the west-central PA was published on the ENTS site last year:
http://www.nativetreesociety.org/fieldtrips/penna/chestnut/american_chestnut.htm Tree dimensions were: cbh 3.9 feet, height 62 feet.

Scott Wade reported on an American Chestnut tree damaged by climbing by a deer hunter with spikes in southeastern PA: http://www.nativetreesociety.org/fieldtrips/penna/se_pa_chestnut/se_pa_american_chestnut.htm The tree dimensions were: 2'6 cbh x 64.1' tall with a 29' spread

So I am optimistic taller ones can be found. We just need to concentrate on finding them. I will post photos to accompany this trip report to the website.

Ed Frank