Hometown History

By Shane WatersSociety & Culture True Crime History

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Typical duration
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per episode

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Hometown History episodes

November 25, 2025 Erie, Pennsylvania: The Wall of Water That Killed 36
August 3rd, 1915, downtown Erie, Pennsylvania, 8.45 at night. For the past five hours, an artificial lake has been growing in the middle of the city. Four city blocks flooded, water 30 feet deep in places, held back by a clogged culvert at 26th and State Streets. Fire Chief John McMahon stands at the edge, watching the reservoir rise. All day, police and firefighters have tried to clear the debris, blocking the culvert. They've used dynamite. It didn't work.
TIMELINE
1795: The downtown district was laid out back in 1795 in a Manhattan-style grid.
1835: By 1835, the creek powered four grist mills and thirteen sawmills.
1915: August 3rd, 1915, downtown Erie, Pennsylvania, 8.45 at night.
1917: Construction began in 1917 and finished in 1923.
1923: Since the Mill Creek tube was completed in 1923, Erie has not experienced another major flood from Mill Creek.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Erie is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 176 | 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

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23 min
November 18, 2025 Athens, Tennessee: The 1946 GI Rebellion and the Limits of Armed Reform
Athens, Tennessee. It's around 2.30 in the morning on August 2, 1946. The McMinn County Jail in Athens, Tennessee is surrounded. Armed veterans, some estimates say as many as 500, crouch behind storefronts, police cruisers, and the brick walls of the First National Bank across White Street. They've been firing rifles at the jail for six hours. Inside, 50 deputies and county officials huddle away from windows as bullets chip the brick walls. One of the men outside, a Marine named Bill White, nods to the others.
TIMELINE
1945: Approximately 3,000 McMinn County veterans returned from World War II between 1945 and early 1946.
1948: By 1948, Cantrell's political machine was essentially gone, which was a genuine victim.
1969: Bill White, the Marine who'd been there from the beginning, said in a 1969 oral history, shooting it out was not the most desirable solution to political problems.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Athens is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 175 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
If you liked this: Episode 73 (Nashville, 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

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
14 min
November 11, 2025 Osage County, Oklahoma: The Oil Murders That Created the FBI
Osage County, Oklahoma. It's around 3 in the morning on March 10, 1923. In Fairfax, Oklahoma, Rita Smith sleeps in her bedroom. Her husband, Bill, is in the adjacent room. Their teenage white servant, Nettie Brookshire, sleeps upstairs. Five gallons of nitroglycerin sits beneath the house. The explosion obliterates the structure. Neighbors three blocks away feel their windows rattle. The Smith house simply disappears. Rita and Nettie die instantly. Bill survives, barely, with massive injuries.
TIMELINE
1808: Between 1808 and 1839, the Osage ceded 96.8 million acres for approximately $166,000, less than two-tenths of a penny per acre.
1897: In October 1897, the Phoenix Oil Company drilled their first successful well along Butler Creek.
1901: Between 1901 and 1930, 319 million barrels of Oklahoma crude were pumped from Osage County ground.
1908: The Act of May 27, 1908 transferred jurisdiction over Osage minors and incompetents to local Oklahoma County probate courts.
1912: By 1912, lease auctions were held under the famous million-dollar elm tree in Pawhuska.
1923: In 1923, the Osage collectively received over $30 million annually in oil royalties.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Osage County is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 174 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
If you liked this: Episode 182 (Boise City, Oklahoma)
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

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
23 min
November 04, 2025 Kalaupapa, Hawai'i: The Saint of Exiles and Hansen's Disease Colony
Kalaupapa, Hawai'i. Imagine a place of breathtaking beauty that is also a prison. Picture what are among the tallest sea cliffs on earth, a sheer wall of green and black stone plunging nearly 4,000 feet into the churning Pacific. This fortress of rock seals off a flat, leaf-shaped peninsula from the world behind it. For centuries, this was a vibrant, sacred part of Hawaii. But in 1866, its profound isolation was weaponized. The Kingdom of Hawaii chose this stunning landscape as a place of permanent exile.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Kalaupapa is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 173 | 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

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
23 min
October 28, 2025Africatown, Alabama: The Last Slave Ship and the Town Built by Survivors
In July 1860, under cover of darkness, 110 West Africans were smuggled into Mobile Bay aboard the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to reach American shores. Arriving fifty years after Congress banned the transatlantic slave trade and made it punishable by death, these captives were quickly hidden and distributed to local plantations before the ship was burned and sunk to destroy the evidence. But this story doesn't end with enslavement. After emancipation in 1865, a group of thirty-two survivors did something extraordinary: they pooled their resources, purchased land north of Mobile, and founded their own community. They called it Africa Town, a settlement where they could preserve their language, customs, and dignity on American soil. This episode explores how these remarkable men and women, torn from kingdoms in present-day Benin and Nigeria, built a thriving community that still exists today, more than 160 years later.
Timeline of Events
July 1860: The schooner Clotilda arrives in Mobile Bay with 110 enslaved West Africans, the last known illegal slave shipment to America
July 1860: Captain William Foster burns and scuttles the Clotilda in the Mobile River to hide evidence of the crime
1865: Civil War ends; Clotilda survivors gain freedom after five years of slavery in Alabama
1866-1870: Approximately 32 survivors purchase land and establish Africa Town (later Africatown) north of Mobile
1872: Community builds Union Baptist Church, their first institution
1910: Mobile County Training School founded, becoming educational center for Africatown
1927-1931: Author Zora Neale Hurston interviews Cudjo Lewis (Oluale Kossola), documenting his firsthand account
1935: Cudjo Lewis dies at age 94, the last known survivor of the transatlantic slave trade in America
May 2019: Archaeologists discover and verify the wreck of the Clotilda in the Mobile River
July 2023: Africatown Heritage House opens, featuring "Clotilda: The Exhibition" and artifacts from the ship

This remarkable settlement emerged during Reconstruction, when most formerly enslaved people had no resources and faced violent opposition. The Africatown founders defied these odds, creating schools, churches, and self-governing institutions while maintaining cultural connections to West Africa.
Historical Significance
Africatown represents the only known American community founded and led entirely by African-born survivors of the slave trade. Unlike other Black settlements of the era, residents spoke Yoruba, Ewe, and Fon languages into the 1950s and maintained West African naming traditions, burial practices, and storytelling customs. The community's existence challenges common narratives about slavery's erasure of African identity, these founders consciously rebuilt pieces of home from memory. Zora Neale Hurston's 1927 interviews with Cudjo Lewis, published as "Barracoon" in 2018, provide one of the only firsthand accounts of the Middle Passage and the experience of direct capture from Africa. The 2019 discovery of the Clotilda's wreckage, verified by the Alabama Historical Commission, has sparked renewed interest in Africatown's history and the ongoing work of descendant communities to preserve their ancestors' legacy. Today, Africatown faces environmental challenges from industrial development but continues as a living memorial to resilience, self-determination, and cultural survival against extraordinary odds.
Sources & Further Reading
National Museum of African American History and Culture: Slave Wrecks Project and Clotilda research initiative
https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/initiatives/slave-wrecks-project/africatown-alabama-usa
Africatown Heritage House & History Museum of Mobile: "Clotilda: The Exhibition" featuring artifacts from the ship and stories of the 110 survivors
https://clotilda.com
Alabama Historical Commission: Official archaeological discovery and verification of the Clotilda shipwreck (2019)
https://www.mobilecountyal.gov/africatown-heritage-house-2
Africatown Heritage Preservation Foundation: Descendant community organization preserving Africatown history and culture
https://africatownhpf.org
"Barracoon: The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo'" by Zora Neale Hurston: Published 2018, based on 1927-1931 interviews with Cudjo Lewis
https://www.zoranealehurston.com/books/barracoon
Smithsonian Magazine: "The 'Clotilda,' the Last Known Slave Ship to Arrive in the U.S., Is Found" (May 2019)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon-last-survivor-slave-trade-180968944

Subscribe to Hometown History every Tuesday for forgotten American stories.
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

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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
30 min
September 26, 2025 Exeter, Rhode Island: America's Last Vampire Exhumation
Exeter, Rhode Island. It's just before dawn, March 17th, 1892. In the graveyard beside Chestnut Hill Baptist Church, five men gather around a crypt, sealed since winter began. Their breath fogs the air. A lantern flickers in the cold. The coffin opens. Inside lies the body of Mercy Lena Brown. She died two months ago, yet her skin is strangely intact. Her nails have lengthened. And when a spade presses to her chest, blood rises to the surface. Someone whispers, she's the one.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Exeter is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 171 | 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

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
11 min
September 05, 2025 Ottawa, Illinois: The Radium Girls' Fight for Justice
Ottawa, Illinois. A young woman, barely out of her teens, dips a fine-tipped brush into a bowl of glowing paint. It's 1922, inside the old Ottawa High School, and sunlight streams through the tall windows, illuminating motes of dust that dance in their golden shafts of light. But these are no ordinary dust motes. They glitter with a faint, otherworldly luminescence. Before her is a tray of small black clock dials. She brings the brush to her mouth.
TIMELINE
1925: As early as 1925, Radium Dial had hired medical experts to examine its employees.
1938: In the spring of 1938, the commission ruled decisively, in favor of the women.
2011: In 2011, a bronze statue was erected in Ottawa.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Ottawa is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 170 | 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

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
18 min
August 05, 2025 Wahpeton, North Dakota: When Lightning Struck the Circus in 1897
Wahpeton, North Dakota. The Twelve-year-old Edward Williams grips a rope with all his might, feet slipping in the muck. A grizzled circus worker rushes over to help. Edward stumbles back, wide-eyed. Suddenly, a blinding flash of lightning engulfs the big top. The main tent pole shatters under the bolt. Men are thrown to the ground. For an instant, everything and everyone is stunned into silence. Rain drips through a gaping hole in the canvas as smoke and steam rise from the splintered pole.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Wahpeton is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 169 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
If you liked this: Episode 183 (Turtle Lake, North Dakota)
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

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
36 min
July 07, 2025 Hickory, North Carolina: The 54-Hour Polio Hospital Miracle of 1944
Hickory, North Carolina. It's just before sunrise, on Saturday, June 24th, 1944. In the woods by Lake Hickory, North Carolina, floodlights cast long shadows over a bustling campfire turned construction zone. Dozens of volunteers, men too old for the war, women in handkerchiefs, even off-duty soldiers, work throughout the night. Hammers cling against nails. Hand saws whirr through pine boards. A line of cars, ambulances, and even a borrowed hearse winds down a dirt road toward a freshly painted stone building.
TIMELINE
1916: A 1916 epidemic killed thousands.
1944: In the summer of 1944, as a deadly polio outbreak threatened North Carolina, the small city of Hickory built a full-scale polio hospital in just 54 hours.
1945: In February 1945, Coronet magazine ran a feature on the town's polio battle, in which the author proclaimed, at this moment the town of Hickory became great for all time.
1955: A decade after Hickory, in 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was introduced to the public.
1957: In April 1957, the cluster of wooden buildings that Hickory's volunteers had thrown up so quickly were finally torn down to make way for a new National Guard armory on that spot.
1994: On the 50th anniversary in 1994, a reunion was held for patients and staff of the Hickory Polio Hospital.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Hickory is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 168 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
If you liked this: Episode 200 (Bessemer City, North Carolina)
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

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
56 min
June 24, 2025 How Wabash, Indiana Saved Its Main Street
Wabash, Indiana. It's the night of March 31st, 1880. A sleepy town in Indiana explodes into the future with the flick of a switch, becoming the first city in the world to light its street with electricity. People gasped in wonder. Some called it magic. Others, a miracle. But like all American towns, Wabash would face darkness too. Empty storefronts. Lost jobs. A Main Street on life support.
TIMELINE
1981: In 1981, Wabash joined the fight.
2002: In 2002 a handful of shopkeepers dragged bright red chairs onto the sidewalk, kept their doors open late and dared the darkness to swallow them.
2014: The story of Wabash took a sharp turn in 2014 with a major grant.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Wabash is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 167 | 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

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
42 min

About Hometown History

From the publisher's feed

Discover forgotten stories from small-town America that never made it into history books. Hometown History is the podcast uncovering hidden American history—overlooked events, local mysteries, and…