http://www.livescience.com/7725-lost-forests-america.html
“Around the arrival of Columbus, “it’s said that squirrels could travel from tree to tree from the Northeast to the Mississippi without ever having to touch the ground,” said Chris Roddick, chief arborist at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York. “In the old growth forests in the Northeast, you had hemlock that were six or seven feet in diameter, chestnut trees 200 feet tall.”
Of course if your name was Rocket J. Squirrel, you didn’t need any stinking trees.
“”“it’s said that squirrels could travel from tree to tree from the Northeast to the Mississippi without ever having to touch the ground,”””
I don’t believe that for a minute. There was nobody trying to stop forest fires back then, nobody managing any preserves either.