"I can remember the Chinquapins years ago. I haven’t seen one in 30 years. I logged in my younger years and we cut a many of them down for posts. They made great posts for the fences. The land was being cleared off by the acres and fences being built. The trees of this area are nothing like they were when I was young. Most all the great big trees are gone and these old hills are bare compared to what they used to be. I am afraid for the future generations who will not have the great resources that we used to have. The logging companies and landowners are cutting down way to many trees and replanting next to none. We need to teach the younger generations to conserve and plant more trees."

Frank K

"The Ozark Chinquapin nuts were delicious and we waited for them to fall like you would wait on a crop of corn to ripen,….. they were that important. Up on the hilltop the nuts were so plentiful that we scooped them up with flat blade shovels and loaded them into the wagons to be used as livestock feed, to eat for ourselves, and to sell. Deer, bears, turkeys, squirrels, and a variety of other wildlife fattened up on the sweet crop of nuts that fell every year. But, starting in the 1950’s and 60’ all of the trees started dying off. Now they are all gone and no one has heard of them."

Harold, 85 year old Missouri outdoorsman describing the trees before the chestnut blight reached the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri.

"The wood produced some beautiful furniture and musical instruments, even today things made from the chinquapin wood is highly prized. Ozark people were able to make a little money selling railroad ties made from chinquapin trees. Farmers used the tree for corner posts and fence posts because it was highly rot resistant. Even the empty burs were used for fertilizer. In a once very poor region of the country, the Ozark Chinquapin was a lifesaver for many people. I HOPE THE TREE IS BROUGHT BACK."

This story was related to my Dads cousin Glen Burford who is 86 years old this year. Mr. Burford grew up in the small community of Welcome Arkansas located in the South Western corner of Arkansas in Columbia County. His house was only about a mile from the Louisiana State line and surrounded by woods on all sides. Growing up in the 1920's and 1930's Mr. Burford remembers well when the forests of South Arkansas were full of Chinquapin trees. In the area around their home place where his family hunted there were hundreds of Chinquapin trees scattered throughout the woods. He said some of these trees were quite large and had huge crops of nuts every fall. One of his favorite pastime was squirrel hunting. Glen said all you had to do to find the squirrels was go to the Chinquapin trees and they would be working alive with the furry little animals. He and his friends got many a dinner from the squirrels he shot out of those Chinquapin trees. Another thing he remembers about the Chinquapins is that there were several on the road that they walked to school on. When the nuts were ripe in the fall they would shake the trees and pick up a pocket full to take to school to snack on during the day. He also remembers how bad the burs would hurt if you stepped on one with your bare feet. Stories like his are pretty much the same throughout the state with people that lived in his era.

Mr. Burford said in the late 40's and 50's all of the trees started dying out because of some kind of blight. He was not familiar with the story of the Chestnut blight that swept the eastern US and killed the American Chestnuts. I told him that same blight was the cause of the Chinquapins disappearing. The sad part is that hardly anyone under 60 years old even knows what a Chinquapin tree is. I hope that people like us can change that and restore one day the Chinquapin to the forest of the south.