General John D. Imboden
Lawyer, politician, Confederate general, land developer, promoter of coal and the founder of the town of Damascus, Virginia. All these jobs were held by one man for whom a mine and a coal camp were al...
25 Jun 202210min
The Legend of Swift's Silver Mine
It's been said that there is a mine somewhere in Appalachia, in which a vein of the highest quality silver can be found. And it's located...well, that's the problem. Nobody knows where this supposed...
18 Jun 202218min
The Murder of the Richards Sisters
Early in 1940 two middle-aged sisters and a teen-aged boy who did odd jobs for them were brutally murdered in their home in Oliver Springs, Tennessee. These killings were unsolved for over 60 years.T...
11 Jun 202214min
The Showgirl and the Tobacco Heir
On November 23, 1931, 20-year-old Zachary Smith Reynolds of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was divorced from his first wife. Six days later he married his second wife, Broadway showgirl Libby Holman,...
4 Jun 202216min
Good Trouble
In 1965 a Kentucky widow managed to drive the coal company from her land with what was called a "sit-in," an early use of peaceful civil disobedience in Appalachia. Today we tell the story of Ollie C...
28 Mai 202211min
Hog Greer of Big Bald Mountain
A jilted young man came over the mountains from North Carolina to Tennessee, intent on spending the rest of his life alone on a mountaintop. This he did, along with developing his own moral code, rew...
21 Mai 202214min
Joash And The Beast
Many years ago, before the first settlers had arrived on the Appalachian frontier of what's now West Virginia and far southwestern Virginia, it's told that a long hunter and his son spent some time hu...
14 Mai 202210min
The Battle of the State of Franklin
In 1788 the fate of the State of Franklin was uncertain. North Carolina had re-exerted control over the area, appointing judges, sheriffs and other state and county officials, and residents of the ar...
7 Mai 202211min
