A desire to “come back to the trees” prompted Pittsburgh natives Jim and Sandy Hissom to move from coastal California to 60 acres in Coolspring Township after the 82-year-old retired from the military.

“I love the land,” said Hissom, whose farm along Otter Creek is home to about 75 native American chestnut trees he’s planted over the years.

“It’s very easy,” Hissom said of cultivating the once-prominent species that’s been nearly wiped out by fungus over the past century. “I can grow chestnut trees easier than a tomato.”

Hissom is one of about three dozen locals who take part in activities through the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation’s Mercer County breeding program.

“Mercer County has a pretty dedicated group of volunteers,” said Gary W. Micsky, associate extension educator at Penn State Extension Mercer County. “Chestnut restoration is alive and well, particularly in Mercer County.”

The chestnut blight was discovered in 1904 in New York and moved through the natural range of trees in the eastern United States at a “pretty rapid rate,” Micsky said.

Many Pennsylvania forests consisted of more than a quarter American chestnuts. By 1950, about four million trees on nine million acres had been destroyed.

“They were such a large component of the forest and the economy,” Micsky said.

Chestnut trees were an abundant food source for people and wildlife and a strong lumber industry grew from the strong, easily worked timber.

Now, there’s a concentrated effort to reestablish the native chestnuts by breeding blight-resistant trees.

“There’s some real good economics to this and some environmental benefits,” said Micsky, who noted a philosophical reason for trying to repopulate the species, as well.

Micsky pointed out that humans brought the blight that’s killed the trees when importing Asian chestnuts.

“How often do we get a chance to make things right?” asked Micsky, who oversees area endeavors as the western region coordinator for the state chapter of the foundation.

Dane Mitchell of Greene Township has been part of the efforts for about five years, which is about how long the group has existed.

“My interest has been in conservation for a long time,” said Mitchell, a retired high school English teacher Micsky called the group’s “Mr. Everything.”