Hometown History

Memphis, Tennessee. Well, currently we are sitting in the center of Sun Studio, where rock and roll was born, here in Memphis, Tennessee. You're hearing the song, Rocket 88, widely considered to be the first rock and roll song ever recorded. It was recorded here, at Sun Studio, by Jackie Brinston and his Delta Cats. The Delta Cats included Ike Turner, one of the many legendary musicians, to record here. Artists from many genres, such as B.B. King, Roy Orbison, and Rufus Thomas, all used Sun Studio.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 67 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 175 (Athens, Tennessee)

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Nashville, Tennessee. In December 1864, Confederate troops were moving toward Nashville with the plan. Union troops had occupied the southern city for the last two years, and Lieutenant General John Bell Hood wanted to take it back. Luckily, the Union Army had prepared for this very moment by building a 180,000 square foot fortress near downtown Nashville called Fort Negley. The Union garrison armed and braced itself for a full frontal assault.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 66 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 175 (Athens, Tennessee)

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Memphis, Tennessee. You'll see pretty browns in beautiful gowns. You'll see tailor-made and hand-me-downs. You'll meet honest men and pickpocket skill. You'll find that business never closes till somebody gets killed. If Beale Street could talk, if Beale Street could talk, married men would have to take their beds in war. Except one or two who never drink booze and the blind man on the corner who sings the Beale Street blues. Those are a few lines from a song called Beale Street Blues.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 65 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 175 (Athens, Tennessee)

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Wabash, Indiana. It was raining on the day of the execution, as Fletcher described it. The rain during the forenoon had the effect of making the streets and almost every other place exceedingly sloppy and muddy. The ground having recently been frozen, the mud was not very deep, but every place was very slippery. While the crowd were assembled around the jail waiting, a rather green young man attempted to show his agility and fleetness by starting off in a fast run.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 64 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 180 (Hagerstown, Indiana)

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Wabash, Indiana. Before it was called Ridge Valley, the community the French family was living in was known as Keller Station. Isaac Keller and his brother own large tracts of land in this area, as well as a popular inn and tavern that was the social hub of the neighborhood. Isaac Keller actually owned the land that the French's, and now the Hubbards, have been living on. On their way to the cabin, the posse locates Keller. They also find a doctor, and they bring both men with them.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 63 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 180 (Hagerstown, Indiana)

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Wabash, Indiana. Aaron French moved in from Cincinnati. He had only been here approximately six months, so he himself was a transient character. He had attempted to be a businessman in Cincinnati, involved in the meatpacking industry, and went broke. And so he decided to maybe try his hand at farming. So he moves up here, gets a place as a tenant farmer, and does what he can with that, and apparently was very prosperous the first year that he did it, and then he became ill.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 62 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 180 (Hagerstown, Indiana)

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Wabash, Indiana. I remember the first time I tried to visit the French family grave, just outside of Wabash, Indiana. It was a Sunday, in the middle of winter, one day before the mini blizzard that closed county schools and buried every car on Market Street up to its door handles. I had just moved to town, and I was feeling the things you feel when you move someplace new. I was wondering if the people were nice, and I thought of the friends I hoped to make, and I hoped that Wabash was a good place to call home.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 61 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 180 (Hagerstown, Indiana)

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

The sky to the west of the small town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, glowed red before the sunrise, on the morning of October 8, 1871. It was Sunday, and when the local priest stepped out of his church to greet local parishioners, the air was smoky and white ash fell like snow. The priest, whose name was Peter Pernan, turned and went back into the church and ran to the front of the sanctuary. He grabbed the holy tabernacle, the small cabinet that holds the Catholic Eucharist.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 60 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

The mineral-stained cliffs of Pictured Rocks rise 200 feet above Lake Superior in colors you wouldn't believe, iron oxide reds, copper greens, manganese browns, and limonite whites. But here's the twist: this remote corner of Michigan might be more than just beautiful. According to Science Digest, Sault Ste Marie in the Upper Peninsula is projected to be the best place to live in America by 2100.

Shane explores the engineering marvel of the Soo Locks, where 10,000 ships annually find their way through a 21-foot water elevator between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. He visits Tahquamenon Falls, survives a boat tour that tested his stomach, and discovers why this rust belt region of 13,000 people could become an apocalyptic oasis when Miami and Los Angeles are facing ecological collapse.

From Ernest Hemingway's favorite fishing spot to a 350-year-old border town split between two countries, this episode reveals why geographic isolation and freshwater abundance might be the ultimate survival strategy. The very things that make the UP challenging today could make it invaluable tomorrow.

Subscribe to Hometown History for forgotten American history stories every week. New episodes release Tuesdays.

Show Notes: 

• Why mineral-stained cliffs create a natural masterpiece in colors most rocks don't have
• The 21-foot "water elevator" that moves 10,000 ships per year between the Great Lakes
• Science Digest's surprising prediction about the best American city to live in by 2100
• Ernest Hemingway's favorite rainbow trout fishing spot along an international border
• How a rust belt city of 13,000 could become an apocalyptic oasis when coastal cities collapse
• The unexpected kindness of Jamie at a Paradise motel during a sold-out weekend

Key Figures:

• Ernest Hemingway - Called St. Mary's River "the best place in the world to fish for rainbow trout"
• Audrey (Soo Locks Visitor Center guide) - Explained the engineering of the Great Lakes water bridge

Timeline:

• 1668: Sault Ste Marie founded (third-oldest continuous US settlement)
• 1814: British burn White House and Capitol during War of 1812
• 1815: Border established between US and Canada, splitting Sault Ste Marie
• 1995: Edmund Fitzgerald bell raised from 530 feet depth in Lake Superior
• 2100: Projected climate refuge status for Upper Peninsula

Location: Upper Peninsula Michigan - Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Tahquamenon Falls State Park, Sault Ste Marie, Paradise

Tags: Upper Peninsula Michigan, Pictured Rocks, Sault Ste Marie, Michigan history, Soo Locks, Great Lakes history, climate change history, American history, local history, true story, forgotten history, Tahquamenon Falls, Lake Superior, engineering history, War of 1812, Edmund Fitzgerald, climate refuge

Category: History

Chapter Markers: 0:00 - Introduction: The Pictured Rocks Boat Tour (And Why There Are No Photos) 2:30 - The Mineral Masterpiece: Understanding the Colorful Cliff Faces 5:00 - Paradise Lost (And Found): The $39.99 Motel Miracle 8:00 - Tahquamenon Falls: Where Rivers Rhyme with "Phenomenon" 11:00 - The Soo Locks: Engineering Marvel of the Great Lakes 14:30 - Sault Ste Marie: The Border Town That Science Says Will Save Us 17:30 - Why 2100 Changes Everything: Climate Refuge Analysis 19:30 - Conclusion: An Invitation to the Future Oasis

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

A tourist pays $700 for a fishing charter on Michigan's Torch Lake, catches an 8-pound beauty, and brings home dinner. There's just one problem: that fish is six pounds of meat and two pounds of tumor. The lake won't be safe to eat from for another 800 years. Welcome to Michigan's copper country, where the industry that supplied 90% of the Union's copper during the Civil War left behind one of America's first EPA Superfund sites.

The Quincy Mine outside Hancock, Michigan wasn't just deep, it was 92 levels deep, stretching two full miles into the earth. Workers from Cornwall, Finland, Italy, and across Europe descended into darkness every day, communicating with the surface through a bell system where nine rings meant ambulance. At least 253 men died at Quincy, though the real number is far higher, the company only counted deaths if your body was pulled out while you were still on the clock.

This is the story of America's copper boom: the immigrant workers who never got rich despite making millionaires in Boston, the women who held mining communities together above ground, and the environmental devastation that's still killing fish today. Because some kinds of wealth come at a cost that compounds for centuries.

Subscribe to Hometown History for forgotten American history stories every week. New episodes release Tuesdays.

Show Notes: :

• A $700 fishing trip to one of America's most toxic lakes ends with a cooler full of tumors
• The Quincy Mine stretched 92 levels deep, two full miles straight into the Michigan earth
• How a bell signal system used nine rings to mean "ambulance" and became a sad daily song
• Cornwall miners, Finnish immigrants, and workers from across Europe built America's copper industry
• Why at least 253 recorded deaths is a massive undercount of the Quincy's real human cost
• The Boston investors who got rich while workers pushed one-ton ore carts twelve times daily
• How switched electrical transformers were dumped directly into Torch Lake, poisoning it for 800 years
• Shane's humiliating attempt to push a mining tram (spoiler: miners were superhumanly strong)

KEY FIGURES:

• Dylan - Quincy Mine tour guide with encyclopedic knowledge of Michigan copper country
• The unnamed fisherman who paid for a charter to a Superfund site
• Cornish miners - generational hard rock experts whose skills dated to pre-Roman times
• The women of mining families - held communities together while men worked underground

Tags: Quincy Mine Michigan, Michigan copper mining history, Hancock Michigan history, Torch Lake pollution, EPA Superfund site Michigan, Upper Peninsula history, American mining disasters, immigrant mining labor, industrial history podcast, forgotten Michigan history, Keweenaw Peninsula, 19th century mining, Cornish miners, Finnish immigrants Michigan

Category: History

Chapter Markers: 0:00 - Introduction: The Hoist House and Quincy Mine 2:30 - Breakfast at Kingus Cafe and Finnish Upper Peninsula Culture 5:00 - Meeting Dylan: The Quincy's Civil War Copper Empire 7:30 - The Torch Lake Fishing Disaster: Six Pounds of Meat, Two Pounds of Tumor 11:00 - Life Underground: Hand Drills, Deafening Steam Engines, and Deadly Darkness 14:00 - The Bell Signal System and the Nine-Ring Ambulance Call 16:00 - 253 Deaths and the Workers Who Never Got Rich 18:00 - Conclusion: Michigan's Toxic Legacy

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history