Places of Legend

The north side of Portland, Oregon, in the late 1800s was the scene of a violent, raucous waterfront, where illicit cargoes from Asia were offloaded, drunken sailors “shanghaied,” the brothels were always busy, and dark opium dens offered escape from the burdens of life. The profits from all these vices—including the smuggling of illegal immigrants from China—flowed to the elegant south side of town.

In this next episode we’ll travel to the docks, whiskey joints, opium dens, and boarding houses of the north side of Portland, Oregon in the late 1800s, a lawless district that contrasted sharply with the neat homes and neighborhoods of the city’s south side. We’ll tell a tale of how these two very different neighborhoods were brought together by a vast smuggling ring masterminded by some of the city’s business elite. The smugglers’ stock in trade were what we now call “undocumented immigrants” coming from China and willing to work in the mines, canneries, lumbering camps. But along with the human cargo, the smugglers’ profits were made from illicitly imported barrels of opium for distribution along the West Coast. Drugs and immigrants, then as now, were an explosive political issue. We’ll discover who were the victims of this smuggling ring and who got off scot free.

Diamond necklaces, rings, and other expensive baubles were an irresistible attraction to the light-fingered burglars who preyed on the wealthy winter visitors to Miami Beach in its early days. One particularly light-fingered jewel thief became the arch-villain of this elegant resort scene. Even after his arrest and imprisonment, the enormous hauls of jewels lifted by this sly criminal kept his legend alive.

The stylish winter playground of Miami Beach in the Roaring Twenties and 1930s—a narrow strip of sandy beaches and luxurious Art Deco hotels—was a popular gathering place for Hollywood celebrities and the nation’s wealthiest elite. In this episode we’ll tell the story of one of the era’s most notorious jewel thieves: a shrewd New Yorker who went by dozens of aliases and mixed unnoticed among the crowds of tuxedoed and bejeweled winter visitors. His method of larceny involved no violence, no confrontation—just an intimate knowledge of Miami Beach’s social scene. He struck when he knew that his wealthy victims would be away from their hotel rooms. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and thick wads of banknotes were his spoils. We’ll hear about his daring heists, how the police tried to put an end to them, and how his legacy continues as Miami Beach lives on as a sun-drenched meeting place for the rich and famous—and for some of the world’s greatest grifters and light-fingered jewel thieves.

Who dreamt up the stunt of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Through the 1800s, countless daredevils and would-be heroes attempted all sorts of stunts at the Falls and in the rapids below. But the first to go over the Falls—and survive—did not fit the usual mold of a thrill-seeking daredevil. She was a 63-year-old music teacher named Annie Edson Taylor, who quickly became a national celebrity.

Niagara Falls is many things: a heart-pounding source of power, an old-fashioned honeymoon destination, a tacky tourist mecca, and a seemingly magnetic attraction for daredevils of all kinds. The Canadian and American falls have seen their share of hoaxer, hucksters, and heroes—especially barrel riders, who attracted crowds as they bobbed down the roaring Niagara River and evoked oohs and ahs from the crowd on the shore as they were carried over the Falls. If they died, the crowds dispersed and the stunt became even more thrilling for the next attempt. If they survived, the barrel riders became immediate, national celebrities—at least for a while. In the next episode we will tell the bizarre tale of the first successful barrel jumper in history, a person who survived the vertical drop over the falls in 1901. Her name was Annie Edson Taylor, who at 63 years old resembled a stern schoolmarm because she was one. But that just one of many unexpected details in the story of her odyssey from the school house to an ingeniously padded barrel and into Niagara Falls immortality.

The great explorer Henry Hudson was determined to discover a Northwest Passage to the riches of Asia through the frigid bay in North America that still bears his name. Hudson’s voyages of exploration are viewed as pioneering triumphs. But in this episode, we’ll tell the tale of his last, fateful mission—a dangerous and obsessive expedition into uncharted waters that ended in terror, violence, and mutiny—and an enduring mystery.

In the Great Age of Discovery, the frigid waters of Hudson’s Bay in northern Canada were believed to lead directly to a sea route to the riches of the Spice Isles of Southeast Asia—and unparalleled commercial wealth for the first nation to discover and lay claim to it. The search for a shorter, northern route from Europe to the Pacific was Henry Hudson’s lifelong obsession. Though he is best known for his voyages along the east coast of North America and up the great river that now bears his name, Hudson’s arctic and sub-arctic voyages were far more courageous. They confronted him and his crewmen with more fearful terrors than those faced in usual transatlantic crossings. Icebergs and huge pods of whales that could easily smash a fragile wooden hull—and barren shores that yielded few provisions—led Hudson and his men to panic and on the brink of starvation. In this episode, we’ll explore an even more chilling aspect of his last, fateful mission: violent mutiny and Hudson’s mysterious disappearance.

Were 70 jugs of dark liquid discovered in a storeroom of an abandoned Saint Paul hospital startling evidence of an ingenious Prohibition-era scheme? Clues lead to a small cosmetics company accused of bootlegging cheap alcohol-based fragrances into drinkable booze. Their guilt or innocence was never proven. Do the 70 jugs of cheap perfume offer a clue to a Prohibition-era mystery?

Saint Paul, Minnesota, was a notorious haven for gangsters and bootleggers, thanks to a corrupt arrangement with the municipal police force. Throughout the Prohibition-era, the city was filled with speakeasies and alcohol flowed freely. A bizarre relic from that time was unexpectedly discovered in an abandoned storeroom of Saint Paul’s Ancker Hospital: a stash of 70 large jugs of dark, colored liquid labeled as perfume. Was it possible for skilled bootleggers to distill cheap perfume into 100 proof booze? In this episode, we’ll follow the clues that lead to a small St. Paul cosmetics company accused by the federal authorities of participating in a vast national conspiracy to smuggle alcohol. That accusation ruined lives and drove the company out of business. Yet the guilt or innocence of the company’s owner remains uncertain. In proposing a solution to this intriguing Prohibition mystery, we’ll also uncover the wider effects of the federal government’s ambitious attempt to regulate public “vice.”  

The series of violent events that erupted in southern Appalachia in the 1870s and 80s, known as the “Hatfield-McCoy Feud,” evokes stereotypes of backwoods blood feuds and caricatured “hillbillies” with loaded shotguns. This episode will offer a very different version of the Hatfield-McCoy story that uncovers clues to the real reason for the feud and how the caricatured image of the hillbilly was born.

The elegant entrance to Delmonico’s restaurant in Lower Manhattan still welcomes billionaires, politicians, and visiting VIPs. It was here in the early 1800s that the upscale American restaurant was born. But the telltale clues contained in an early printed menu reveal how the name “Delmonico’s” also became a familiar brand name for eat-and-run lunchrooms for New York’s working poor.

Just a few blocks away from the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, the frenetic hub of the economic life of the nation, the imposing colonnaded entrance of Delmonico’s Restaurant still represents an oasis of calm and elegance for the great city’s rich and powerful. It was there in the late 1800s, at lavish banquets in Delmonico’s elegant, wood-paneled dining rooms that Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, and the cream of New York high society praised the elegant cuisine.

But an early menu bearing the name “Delmonico’s,” long considered the first restaurant bill of fare ever printed in America, offers cheap and simple food. Was the story of Delmonico’s one of increasing culinary sophistication that began with pigs’ feet and hamburger steak and only gradually developed its offering of expensive gourmet cuisine? Or have some telltale clues contained in the early printed menu been overlooked by generations of food historians? In this episode we’ll take a cook’s tour of early Manhattan eating places and uncover a strange story about food and its mysteriously changing relationship to social status and economic success in the heart of America’s financial capital.

On an isolated farm just outside LaPorte, Indiana, some unspeakable acts took place in the early 1900s. They remained deep and deadly secrets until a package of love letters was discovered in an immigrant’s cabin in South Dakota—letters that revealed the shockingly murderous intent of a widowed farm wife named Belle Gunness.

Local rumors had it that the Gunness farm, in rural northern Indiana, had a macabre history of misfortune, tragedy, and suicide. But no one expected that all the previous calamities that befell this property would be far overshadowed by the serial murders that took place there at the turn of the twentieth century. The tale of the killings on the Gunness farm is a detective story with many clues and lingering mysteries. It is a story of the loneliness of immigrants to a new country, the lure of riches at a time of agricultural decline, and the deceptiveness of our deepest preconceptions about the capacity of men and of women to commit horrific crimes.

Many mysteries remain in the case of Belle Gunness. In this episode we will follow a trail of clues to discover a series of increasingly disturbing revelations. Who were the immigrant men who eagerly answered lonleyhearts ads in foreign language newspapers only to meet a grim fate instead of a happily married life? Did the gruesome killings on the Gunness farm go unpunished? We’ll unravel a story of evil acts and restless spirits that still cast a shadow on the residents of a small Midwestern farming community.

Britt is a mecca for hobos — wanderers and boxcar riders with names like “Railroad Randy” and “50-Tooth Slim.” Every August they gather and swap stories about their rambling lives that ironically reflect changing American visions of home.

The National Hobo Convention convenes in Britt, Iowa the second week every August, bringing together a colorful assembly of hitchhikers, rail riders, ramblers, and roamers from all over the United States. Since the late 1800s, the figure of the hobo—with baggy pants, battered hat, and meager possessions wrapped up in a cloth bindle on a stick resting on the shoulder—has become a familiar figure in American popular culture. From Charlie Chaplin to Woody Guthrie to Boxcar Willie, the hobo or tramp has become a familiar and romantic character, embodying the joys and heartbreak of life on the road.

But what is the difference between hoboes and the homeless? What are the forces that have driven generations of men and women to leave home and family and strike out on their own? In this episode we’ll tell the story of the annual Hobo Convention, which has been the meeting place of the fraternity of the footloose since 1900. Britt, Iowa is itself a product of the railroad, established as a depot of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. It’s a perfect place to tell the story of hobo culture and reveal the hidden customs and bizarre happenings that take place, even today, at the nation’s hobo camps.

Did vampires roam the swamps and forests of early New England? A grotesquely vandalized grave discovered in the small town of Griswold, Connecticut, revealed a ghoulish secret that had been concealed for almost 200 years. 

The small town of Griswold, Connecticut, settled in the late 1690s by farmers from Massachusetts and Rhode Island seeking a life free from strict Puritan religious restraints, conceals a gruesome secret. The sudden unexpected discovery of human remains in a sand and gravel pit led to the discovery of an early American “vampire” whose grave was intentionally opened and whose mortal remains were intentionally vandalized so that he could not prey on the living ever again. In this episode we will tell the story of a unique archaeological discovery that revealed the first material evidence of a dark and frightening aspect of colonial New England folklore: the belief in the threatening existence of demonic spirits, undead bodies, and soul suckers that wandered among them, posing a constant danger to the lives and well-being of the colonial farmers and their families in this remote rural borderland between Rhode Island and Connecticut. That belief gave rise to what has been called the “New England Vampire Panic” of the 1800s that only ended when medical science discovered what really caused so many New Englanders to fall ill and inexplicably “waste away.”

Photograph of the excavation of Burial 4 Courtesy of the Connecticut Office of State Archaeology.