A once thriving lumber and mill town in the mountains of western North Carolina, Mortimer rose fast, becoming prosperous…until it was washed away twice in massive flooding events.

Shortly after a 1916 wildfire burned large tracts of timberland in the mountains,  two hurricanes struck the area back to back, causing historic floods not seen again in the area until Helene in 2024, nearly wiping out the town.

The people of Mortimer made a comeback driven by textile work and the CCC, until a final blow came from another flood in 1940. Today little remains of Mortimer along Wilson Creek. 

Mortimer’s story is another one of the Stories of Appalachia.

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This week Steve and Rod tell the story of a Christmas morning that ended in heartbreak instead of celebration.

In 1882, a passenger train and a freight engine collided near Millboro, Virginia, killing six crewmen and scalding the lone surviving passenger. How this tragedy occurred, the story of the men who paid the price along with that of the injured passenger, is another one of the Stories of Appalachia.

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

John Pemberton Gatewood was a notorious Confederate bushwhacker/guerrilla leader.  

Born in Fentress County, Tennessee, in 1844, Gatewood's life took a dark turn after a Union attack on his family led him to abandon the Confederate army and become a guerrilla fighter. Leading his own unit in north Georgia and known as the long-haired, red-bearded beast, Gatewood was driven by his thirst for revenge after the brutal assault on his family.  

John Pemberton Gatewood, a figure whose story is another one of the Stories of Appalachia. 

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Major Lewis Redmond’s story sounds like it comes from a 19th century dime novel.  He was a Carolina moonshiner, an outlaw and, thanks to actually being in some of those dime novels after the Civil War, a folk hero.
 
His killing of a U. S. Marshal led to a life on the run across North and South Carolina, making Redmond a legend.  Today we tell his story.
 
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In 1955, at the age of 67, Emma Gatewood became the first woman to solo thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to the top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine. In this episode, Steve and Rod tell the story of her remarkable journey from a childhood in rural Ohio, through years of hardship and abuse, to the day this grandmother stepped onto the trail with nothing but a sack, a shower curtain, and an iron will. Her hike captured America’s attention, inspiring generations of hikers.

It’s another one of the Stories of Appalachia.

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In 1909, a Johnson City businessman named A.J. Slagle was lured by promises of buried Spanish gold hidden in a Cocke County house. What began as a desperate bid to recover from business losses ended in a murder, the body tossed into the French Broad River.

Join Steve and Rod as they tell a true story of greed, deception, and a treasure that never existed, a case that shocked East Tennessee and became another one of the Stories of Appalachia.

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Four years after the Hillsville courthouse shootout shocked Virginia, another one of the Allen brothers met a violent end. Jack Allen, brother of Floyd Allen, and once a constable in that Carroll County courtroom, was shot and killed in 1916 at a roadhouse near Mt. Airy, North Carolina. His killer, 24-year-old Will McCraw, claimed self-defense and was acquitted.

But the story doesn’t stop there.

McCraw may not have been a stranger to Jack Allen’s family and some believe he was nudged into the confrontation by men with unfinished business from Hillsville.

In this episode, Steve and Rod follow the trail from the courtroom to the roadhouse, tracing rumors of revenge, Baldwin-Felts detectives and a possible family connection to the killer.

It’s another one of the Stories of Appalachia.

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After the Civil War, thousands of defeated Confederates refused to live under the Union flag. Instead, they packed up their families and headed for new lives in South America in a Confederate exodus from the United States.

One of them was Ezekiel B. Pyles, a young man from the mountains of north Georgia, who rode with General John Hunt Morgan’s raiders, fought across East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia and was captured at the Battle of Kingsport before becoming part of Jefferson Davis’ guard as he fled Richmond at the end of the Civil War.  

His story didn’t end there, for he joined around 20,000 other Southerners who migrated to Brazil to start over.  

In this episode, Rod and Steve tell the story of Pyles’ incredible journey — from the hills of Appalachia to the colony of Americana. 
 
It’s another one of the Stories of Appalachia.

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In August 1925, two years before the famed Bristol Sessions, Ralph Peer and Okeh Records set up a temporary studio on the rooftop of Asheville’s brand-new Vanderbilt Hotel.

Over ten sweltering days, local musicians cut sixty test records, capturing the raw sounds of traditional Appalachian ballads, banjo tunes, and old songs. Though often overlooked, these Asheville sessions lit the spark that would explode two years later in Bristol, igniting the Big Bang of country music.

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This Halloween marks 10 years of stories from Rod and Steve; to mark the holiday and our tenth anniversary, we’re going to take you deep into the dark side of Appalachia with two chilling tales from southwest Virginia.
 
First, Steve tells the story of three strange sisters who ran girls’ schools in Murfreesboro and Christiansburg—women whispered to be linked to evil spirits and who eventually faced justice for a terrible crime. Some say their spirits still haunt the ground where their school stood in Christiansburg over a hundred years ago.
 
Then, Rod shares the legend of two cunning sisters from Scott County, whose greed and cruelty led to a savage end. Their ghosts are said to still haunt the cemetery where they were denied burial.

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Happy Halloween, y’all!