Riceville, Maine. Somewhere in the forest of eastern Maine, there's a town that no longer exists. It's a summer morning, sometime in the early 1900s. A traveler makes his way down a rutted logging road through dense strands of hemlock and spruce. He's headed for Riceville, a company town built around a tannery on Buffalo Stream. He knows the place. Maybe a hundred people live there. Workers, families, children who attend the schoolhouse at the north end of town. But when he arrives, something is wrong.

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WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 194 | 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

In a lighthouse keeper's cottage on Prudence Island, Rhode Island, six people huddle on the floor. It's September 21st, 1938. Outside, a wall of gray-green water is racing across Narragansett Bay, 16 feet of churning ocean pushed by winds exceeding 100 miles per hour. George Gustavus, the lighthouse keeper, stands with his wife Mabel, his 12-year-old son Edward, and three neighbors who came seeking shelter. They'd climbed upstairs when the water started rising.

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WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 193 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 192 (Watch Hill, Rhode Island)

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

Watch Hill, Rhode Island. It's one o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon in September 1938. Miss John McKisson Camp is hosting a luncheon on the rocks at Weakapog, just east of Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Her guests gather in their summer finest. Linen dresses, straw hats, the quiet elegance you'd expect from old money families who've summered here for generations. Someone mentions that the sea looks restless today. Another guest points to a strange yellow light hanging over the water.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 192 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 171 (Exeter, Rhode Island)

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

Deal Beach, New Jersey. It's 6.10 on the morning of November 13th, 1854, and the gale-force winds that rattled windows all night have driven the few families of Deal Beach from their beds. Through the fog and driving rain, they see her. A massive three-masted clipper ship, full sails still set, stuck hard on the outer sandbar, just 500 yards from shore. The ship's bell. That's what woke them. The incessant staccato clatter cutting through the storm. Someone aboard is ringing that bell, desperate, rhythmic, unceasing.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 191 | 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

January 14, 1913. Hazardville, Connecticut. A winter morning at the old powder mills, now operating under the Hercules Powder name for exactly 30 days. Workers Charles Blunden and Jacob Stocker went about their routines, same as they had for years. The machinery hummed. The river flowed past stone walls built to contain disasters. Then four blasts ripped through the mill in rapid succession. The sound reached Hartford, over 20 miles away.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 190 | 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

Ord, Nebraska. January 12th, 1888. Morning. A one-room schoolhouse six miles south of Ord, Nebraska. 40 degrees in January. Unseasonably warm. The morning where farm kids arrive without their heavy coats because it feels like spring decided to show up three months early. Minnie Freeman, 19 years old, is teaching her first real class. 13 students, ages 6 to 14. And there's Frankie Gibbon in the back row, not paying attention to arithmetic because he's playing with something else, a ball of twine.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 189 | 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

Lewistown, Montana, 1889. Mid-June, 1889. The Judith River runs cold through central Montana Territory. The water flows down from the Little Belt Mountains, snaking through grassland where cattle ranches have only just begun to replace the buffalo herds. A rancher riding his property spots something caught against the rocks near samples crossing. At first, he thinks it's driftwood. Then, he gets closer. A body. A woman, face down. Well-dressed. Too well-dressed for drowning. Before the weekends, four more will surface.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 188 | 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

Globe, Arizona. Saturday night, November 16th, 1907. Approaching midnight in Globe, Arizona's red-light district, two Globe police officers found him lying in the dirt. A 25-year-old Finnish miner named Richard Veklund. He'd been drugged and robbed. His pockets were empty. Over a hundred dollars, gone. The officers tried to rouse him, asked where he lived. Veklund managed to open his eyes. In a voice so weak they could barely hear him, he whispered, Room 18, International. The officers froze.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 187 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 80 (Grand Canyon, Arizona)

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

Taos, New Mexico. On the morning of July 3rd, 1929, U.S. Deputy Marshal Jim Martinez stood outside Arthur Rothford Manphy's fortress-like mansion in the heart of Taos, New Mexico. He'd come to serve legal papers to the 70-year-old Englishman, but the moment he approached the back door, he knew something was quite wrong. Flies. Hundreds of them. Blackening the screen door, their buzzing audible from 20 feet away. Martinez scaled the high adobe wall.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 185 | 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

East Montpelier, Vermont. September 5th, 1889, 11 o'clock in the morning. Laura Cutler Gold walked up the path to her family's farm in East Montpelier, Vermont, wearing yesterday's wedding dress. She'd been married for 14 hours. Her new husband, George, stopped at the woodshed to gather kindling for the stove. Inside the farmhouse, the elderly woman Laura had hired as a chaperone was waiting with a warning. Sherman Caswell, the hired hand who'd worked the farm since 1867, was upstairs, and he was drunk.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 184 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 195 (Waterbury, Vermont)

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