Stories of Appalachia

In September 1894, a routine drilling operation on a Tyler County, West Virginia, farm broke into a massive natural gas pocket, unleashing one of the most powerful and uncontrollable wells the world had ever seen. For nearly a year, the Big Moses well defied human engineering, triggered massive fissures in the ground, survived two separate lightning strikes, and wasted billions of cubic feet of ga...

Vincent “Clawhammer” Witcher became one of the most feared Confederate guerrilla leaders along the Virginia/Kentucky border in the Civil War.  As the leader of what was called “Witcher’s Boys, he operated from the Ohio River in what’s now West Virginia down into northeast Tennessee, bringing brutal violence to both friend and foe alike.  This week we tell his story, including notorious incidents i...

The early settlements along the Watauga and Holston Rivers in what’s now Tennessee were the very beginning of “The Wild West.” While names like Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and William Bean filled the history books, another man was standing right beside them at nearly every major turning point—yet his story has been lost to time.   In this episode, suggested by one of our listeners, Stev...

In 1781, as the American Revolution raged, Appalachian settlers in what’s now West Virginia rose in armed rebellion against the Virginia government. Angry over crushing taxes, forced military service, and wartime demands, John Claypool led an Appalachian backcountry revolt that sparked panic across the Shenandoah Valley. This is the little-known story of Claypool’s Rebellion, another one of the St...

Quill Rose was a Confederate veteran, bear hunter, blacksmith, storyteller, and moonshiner who lived deep in the Smoky Mountains along Eagle Creek. In this episode of Stories of Appalachia, we tell his story, from Cades Cove in the 1840s through war, family life, isolation, to his illegal whiskey-making in the mountains. Along the way, Quill became a figure known not just for survival, but also fo...

This week we have not one but two podcast episodes for you! In this one, we go to Glen Ferris, West Virginia, a town at the falls of the Kanawha River, to tell the story of the Glen Ferris Inn, a place that hosted presidents, businessmen, Civil War generals and even, it’s said, a ghost!  If you’ve not done so already, be sure to subscribe to the Stories podcast so you don’t miss any of our stories...

This week we have not one, but two episodes for you! For this story, we travel back to December of 1908, when people in Russell and Adair counties in Kentucky were shaken after 12-year-old Mamie Womack failed to return home from school. Her disappearance that winter afternoon triggered a desperate search, as neighbors, family, and bloodhounds followed a trail through the woods that uncovered a hor...

In the late 1600’s, Dr. John Lederer, a German immigrant to the Virginia colony, became one of the first Europeans to explore the Appalachian region. Between 1669 and 1670, Lederer made three trips into the Blue Ridge Mountains, traveled west and south through Native territories in Virginia and the Carolinas, and searched for a passage west through the Alleghenies. Along the way he encountered wol...

The highest mountain valley in Virginia is Burke’s Garden, also referred to as “God’s Thumbprint” for its bowl-like shape. It was here that something began killing sheep in the winter of 1952.  Night after night, farmers woke to fresh losses, and no one could agree on what was responsible. Was it a wolf, a panther, or something stranger and unexplainable?  This week we tell the story of Burke’s Ga...

This week we tell the strange and little-known story of the Mountain Cove Community, a spiritualist commune founded in the mountains of what’s now West Virginia in the early 1850s. Led by Reverends Thomas Lake Harris and James L. Scott, the group believed they could communicate with spirits, build a new Eden in Appalachia, and create a perfect society apart from the corruption of the outside world...