The Kingdom of the Happy Land
After the Civil War, as the South lay in ruins, a group of freedmen decided to depart the Mississippi plantation on which they had been held as slaves in search of a promised land. They found it...in ...
17 Feb 202412min
Billy Dean Anderson: Appalachia's Most Wanted Outlaw
Billy Dean Anderson was born in Fentress County, Tennessee, and, by all accounts, lived a normal law-abiding life as he grew up, even becoming a volunteer preacher in his church.Then it all went horri...
10 Feb 202412min
Amos Owens: The Cherry Mountain Moonshiner
After the Civil War a young man bought Cherry Mountain in Rutherford County, North Carolina and used the wild cherries found there to add flavor to his distilled product, illegal of course, that becam...
3 Feb 202418min
Dr. John R. Brinkley: The Goat Gland Doctor from Appalachia
John Romulus Brinkley was born in Burnsville, North Carolina, to a former Confederate medic and his housekeeper. From those humble beginnings young Brinkley grew up to become a traveling "Quaker doct...
27 Jan 202438min
The Tragic End of Outlaw Joe Brown
Joe Brown was a hell-raiser, thug and violent alcoholic who terrorized the town of Whitmer, West Virginia at the turn of the 20th century. He did, that is, until he went a step too far.That, folks, is...
20 Jan 20249min
The 1921 West Virginia Capitol Fire
On January 3, 1921, a massive fire broke out at the West Virginia state capitol in Charleston. Not a big deal, you might be thinking, fires happen all the time. This one, though, had a twist or three,...
13 Jan 202413min
The Tragedy at the Cowee Tunnel
On December 30, 1881, 30 convicts, along with their guards, were shackled and deposited on the banks of the Tuckaseegee River near Dillboro, North Carolina, with a job to do: cross the river in a boa...
6 Jan 202411min
Bettie Simms, The Queen of the Moonshiners
In the early 1900's a young mother in Polk County, North Carolina, had a decision to make. She had separated from her abusive husband and had several young children to feed, house and clothe, with ve...
30 Dec 202313min
