Hometown History

The town of Gay, Michigan sits on Lake Superior with a 265-foot smokestack rising from apocalyptic black sand beaches that can't grow grass. This isn't a warzone, it's what's left after the Mohawk Mining Company extracted half a billion dollars in copper, then sold every house in town for three to seven dollars and vanished. The stamp sands here are so loaded with arsenic they'...

An 87-year-old woman sits in an easy chair by the window of a 148-year-old general store, scowling at passersby 411 hours a day. She's been called a bridge troll, a local legend, and Michigan's grumpiest shopkeeper. But when you treat her right, and maybe buy a $35 hoodie, Arbutus Peterson will surprise you with unexpected kindness in Phoenix, a dying mining town on the Keweenaw Peninsula....

In the heart of Michigan's Upper Peninsula lies Calumet, once the wealthiest town in Copper Country and nearly Michigan's capital city. Today, Shane explores the ghost towns and vanished communities of the Keweenaw Peninsula, where Finnish immigrants built an industrial empire that suddenly collapsed. From White City's abandoned amusement parks to Jacobsville's bronze cemetery mark...

Keweenaw, Michigan. The first mining boom in American history was not the California Gold Rush, the Klondike Gold Rush, or any other gold rush. The first mining boom in American history was the Copper Rush of the uppermost part of the Upper Peninsula, the Keweenaw Peninsula. And by the time it was over, this boom actually had a greater economic impact than either of those gold rushes. In fact, fro...

The distinctive sound of the Mackinac Bridge is due to the grating in the two center lanes, one going each way. This grating allows air to pass through the bridge, rather than pushing against it. Part of the reason for this technology was the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge years earlier in Washington State. There's footage of this. You see the entire bridge convulsing and rolling like a...

In the year 2100, Michigan's Upper Peninsula might be the best place to live in North America, if you can handle the isolation. Right now, it's the emptiest region in the eastern United States, with sprawling sugar sand beaches completely abandoned on 85-degree summer days. If it were its own state, the UP would be the least populated in America by 50%, despite being larger than Connecticu...

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. This episode is focused less on history than a hometown that specializes in history. Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is famous for tourist attractions and southern hospitality, but it's also a hotbed of local culture and storytelling. There are more than two dozen museums and galleries in the area, and whatever your interests happen to be, there is likely something that will a...

Asheville, North Carolina. This new year, why not let Audible expand your life by listening? Explore over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts, and exclusive Audible originals that'll inspire and motivate you. Tap into your well-being with advice and insight from leading professionals and experts on better health, relationships, career, finance, investing, and more. Maybe you want to kick a bad habi...

Only 150 speakers remain. The Cherokee language, once spoken across a million square miles of North America, is disappearing, and COVID just killed 25% of the remaining middle dialect speakers. At the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina, cultural liaison John John shares the devastating legacy of boarding schools, the "kill the Indian, save the man" policy that nearly...

The Cherokee don't believe in signatures. You'd understand why after 40 broken treaties with the U.S. government. In 1763, Britain promised no colonization west of the Appalachians, settlers came anyway. In 1785, the U.S. guaranteed Cherokee land protection, it was seized within years. By 1868, this once-mighty nation had walked the Trail of Tears and lost a million square miles of their h...

Oak Ridge, Tennessee. One of the most important cities in the history of civilization was founded on Oak Ridge when the world-altering Manhattan Project made this area its district headquarters. Alan and Ray take us a little deeper into the science of Oak Ridge. And I know that you said that initially they wanted a location and they wanted to keep it at least out of the press. So did the locals im...

On a warm summer day in 1900, the village idiot of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, laid on his back in the middle of the woods and heard the voice of God. Returning home, he told his wife, In the woods, as I lay on the ground and looked up into the sky, there came to me a voice as loud and as sharp as thunder. The voice told me to sleep with my head on the ground for forty nights, and I will be shown vision...

Wabash, Indiana. We've named this episode After the Hunt for the Red October, because it's like that, but instead of a Soviet submarine, the search is on for a powerful sleeper agent known to the U.S. government only as Dorothy. The year is 1981, and her network of associates has infiltrated the U.S. military to the extent that the Department of Defense has concerns over national security,...

Indianapolis, Indiana. The greatest author in the history of my home state of Indiana is by most counts the incomparable Kurt Vonnegut. Before I ever knew he was a fellow Hoosier, I had chewed through a dozen of his books in high school, in place of schoolwork, the Bible, and everything else. At some point, you've probably read him too. Classics like Mother Night, Slaughterhouse-Five, Dead Eye...

Martinsburg, West Virginia. She was known by many names, the Siren of Shenandoah, the Rebel Joan of Arc, the Cleopatra of Secession. But when the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in April 1861, she was just 17-year-old Belle Boyd of Martinsburg. By the time the Civil War was over, she would be one of the most dangerous women in America. Belle would use her beauty and charm for the cause of th...

In 1981, the Naval Investigative Service launched a massive hunt for a mysterious figure known only as "Dorothy." Agents went undercover in clubs and interrogation rooms across the country, convinced they were tracking a powerful operative who controlled a vast network of infiltrators deep within the U.S. military. The more they searched, the more her name appeared. Every door opened at th...

Richmond, Virginia. The year is 1861, and America is on the grips of a bloody civil war that will change it forever. In Richmond, the capital of the new Confederate states, Southern bells and ladies are sewing uniforms, throwing fundraising gallows, and nursing injured soldiers, all with the support of young female slaves. They can't go into the battlefield, but they're doing the best they...

Hammond, Indiana is known for a number of things, like being the home of the former NFL team, the Hammond Pros, who were led by the first black coach in NFL history, the legendary Fritz Pollard, in 1925. It would be another 60 years before there was a second black NFL coach, when the Oakland Raiders hired Art Schell in 1989, so Fritz was living well ahead of his time. While Pollard is an icon, and...

In 1647, laborers toiling away at the Tower of London uncovered two small skeletons while clearing away rubble from a staircase. Had the discovery been made today, scientists would have used a whole host of forensic tools, including genetic samples and family trees, to determine the identities of the remains. None of these existed back in 17th century England, however. People still knew who the sk...

Marion, Indiana. When Hall of Fame NBA coach Phil Jackson was asked which player he would choose first overall for his own personal dream team, he paused for a moment to think it over. When the players he's coached, his need to step back and reflect is easy to understand. We're talking Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, and the list goes on. The...

New York City, New York. how you're not supposed to wear white after Labor Day? Imagine a similar rule for baseball hats, making it a crime of fashion to wear any hat with a soft cap and a stiff bill after a certain date, say September 15th, right near the end of baseball season. And imagine that the penalty for breaking this rule isn't a bit of a side-eye at the country club, but having a...

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There are just times when you need a great speech. These times are rare, but they exist. In most cases, the last thing you need is more words. You usually need someone to get up and do something, build something, pay for something. But sometimes words are all you have. Sometimes nobody knows what to do, what to build, or who to pay. You look at the other people in the roo...

Cambridge, Massachusetts. On a cold morning, October 21, 1861, an officer in the Union Army named Major Henry Livermore Abbott led the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment through another hopeless assault against a superior enemy force up an isolated hill at the tip of northern Virginia at what would become known as the Battle of Balls Bluff. Like so many battles at the beginning of the war, the U...

Hamburg, Germany. Sometimes, the bad guys win. Sometimes, the people with the worst intentions get what they want in life, and their victims lose everything. Like when one unemployed German lathe operator attempted to murder the best tennis player in the world with a 9-inch boning knife in 1993 on live TV. This summer, the Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic won his 19th and 20th major tournament...

Alexandria, Virginia. One of the most important hometowns in American history is Alexandria, Virginia. Along with being the wealthiest city in Virginia, Alexandria is home to the Institute for Defense Analysis, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and the National Science Foundation. This city of 150,000 boasts a long list of famous residents, including Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, Doors...