That section of your yard reminds me of part of ours. We had 4 acres, 2.5 to 3 of them wooded. Had a little tornado come through, and we lost about 20 trees in the area we mowed, around 100 total, a lot of them were pretty big. House was OK, although we got a new roof out of it. Nobody wanted any of our trees though (mostly ash and cottonwood, some cherry, sugar maple, and a couple small walnut) - I guess due to the tornado possibly messing up the fibers in it? I dunno, but none of the mills were interested. I can see why they wouldn't want to bother with the cottonwood, but thought they might want the ash/cherry/walnut. Thankfully we had neighbors to help, and they got some nice firewood for their work. We didn't have a fireplace at the time, but the firepit out back burned well for a couple years!

We'd have cut the whole 4 acres down and retired if we could have gotten $900 a tree out of it! lol

Cool idea about using some of it for a mantle.