The Changing Forests of Haywood

Haywood County sits in the heart of an extremely diverse ecosystem with more than 130 species of trees. Early explorers and settlers marveled at the magnificent forests of oak and chestnut whose trees grew to 100 feet or taller. However, this landscape would soon come to change.

 With the arrival of the railroad in the 1880s and steam-powered technology like the narrow-gauge Shay locomotive, large-scale logging was able to reach deep into Haywood’s virgin territories. Development happened fast: as early as 1905, much of these once-wildlands had been harvested. As one observer wrote, “....a considerable portion of the forest is [now] second growth.”

Industrial logging combined with early farming techniques on steep slopes would come to cause much of the erosion of Haywood County’s rich topsoil. Around the same time, a vicious blight would see to the end of the American Chestnut, the dominant canopy tree that had constituted 30 or more percent of the area’s forest. What had once been classified as chestnut-heath would come to be categorized as oak-heath.

Photograph courtesy of The Haywood County Library Digital Collection