The American chestnut was once one of the most important trees in the eastern forest, ranging from Georgia to Maine and west to the Ohio River Valley, and in the Appalachian Mountains making up roughly one tree in four. It grew quickly and very large, often living 300 years or more, reaching over 100 feet in height and more than 6 feet in diameter, and its early summer blooms could make mountainsides appear snow covered. Wildlife depended heavily on its nutritious nuts, and people used the tree extensively, gathering chestnuts for food and income, feeding livestock, making flour, and using its straight-grained, rot-resistant lumber for cradles, caskets, fences, construction, railroad ties, shingles, panels, and telephone poles. First identified in 1904 in New York's Bronx Zoological Park, the chestnut blight, caused by an Asiatic fungus, spread through the tree's range at up to 30 miles a year and by the 1950s had devastated over 200 million acres and killed an estimated 4 billion chestnut trees, a loss often cited as the worst ecological disaster of the 20th Century in the U.S. The fungus attacks the cambium under the bark, forming cankers that cut off nutrients and kill the tree, though roots often survive and send up stump sprouts that may grow for years before succumbing. In 1983, The American Chestnut Foundation was founded to restore the species to eastern forests through breeding blight-resistant, regionally adapted trees, and by 2009 it announced the first forest planting of potentially blight-resistant Restoration Chestnut 1.0 as planting, testing, and further development continued with the help of members, volunteers, and advances in molecular genetics.