o2005 In the Blue Ridge Mountains, there are places where the road grows easy. That is precisely where a person should be most afraid. In the fall of 1893, the Norfolk and Western Railway sent a surveyor named Ambrose Rainer into a remote corner of western North Carolina. He was forty-seven years old, tall and narrow-shouldered, … Read more
In the autumn of 1887, a 34-year-old surveyor named Wendell Crumrine was hired by a coal speculation company out of Philadelphia to map a stretch of unclaimed ridgeland along the border between Eastern Kentucky and what was then still being called West Virginia. The company wanted to know whether the timber was worth cutting and … Read more
La neve cadeva sulla città la vigilia di Natale, fitta e continua, coprendo le strade con un silenzio che sembrava quasi sacro. I fili di luci colorate tremolavano sul marciapiede bagnato, riflessi raddoppiati nell’asfalto scuro, mentre i negozi lungo la via chiudevano le loro saracinesche una dopo l’altra, sprofondando nell’oscurità. La gente correva verso casa … Read more
In the winter of 1915, a case unfolded in the Missouri Ozarks that would confound the scientific community for decades. It centered on a twelve-year-old girl named Clara Caldwell, whose sudden acquisition of advanced knowledge had no discernible source. The story remains one of the most disturbing yet least known chapters in American scientific history. … Read more
La pioggia di fine ottobre ai piedi dei Monti Sawatch non assomiglia a quella che la gente immagina quando sente il nome Colorado. Non è una nevicata leggera o un acquazzone estivo che si asciuga in mezz’ora. È una pioggia grigia, sottile, testarda, che penetra negli strati più spessi di lana e cuoio e si … Read more
In the winter of 1883, twenty-seven men entered the dense forests of the Pettyroot mountain range in northern Montana. The lumber and fur trades were booming, drawing ambitious men into the wilderness with promises of wealth. Their camp, established near what is now known as Blackwater Creek, was meant to serve as a base for … Read more
In the high coal country, if you walk far enough up the wrong hollow, you will come to a fence. It is old wire on newer posts, with a gate that somebody keeps oiled. Past the gate, set into the side of the slope, is a wall of poured concrete and fieldstone where a mine … Read more
In eastern Kentucky, there is a road that forks where no road should fork. Both branches look the same. Both cut into the hills. If you take the wrong one and do not realize it immediately, you may walk for a full hour before it stops being a road at all. The branch you do … Read more
In the winter of 1823, a civilian mapping expedition of 97 men entered the Ozark Highlands of the American interior. None of them came out. What happened to them remained unexplained for more than a century, until a sinkhole opened on a Missouri farm in 1957 and led two men to a sealed cave chamber … Read more
In the remote hollows of the Appalachian Mountains, there are stories that communities chose to forget. Some were deliberately erased from official records because the truth was too disturbing to preserve. One such story unfolded in 1891, in a settlement that appears on no modern map. The place was called Thorn Ridge Hollow, located deep … Read more