o2005

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

In the autumn of 1881, a surveyor named Obadiah Kestrel rode out of Fayetteville, Arkansas, with a hired man and a pack mule, bound for the western edge of Washington County. He had been hired by a railroad concern considering a route through the lower Ozarks. He carried a Colt on his hip and a … Read more

On the night of November 4, 1959, a 60-year-old man walked up to a tavern called Cardiallos in South Brooklyn. The bar was owned by his own cousin. He had been drinking in it, and in places like it, for most of his adult life. When he pulled open the front door, two men in … Read more

On the night of February 6, 1975, a rented Oldsmobile sped through the quiet streets of Orchard Lake, Michigan, a wealthy suburb where crime was virtually unknown. When the car came around a bend, it nearly collided head-on with a patrol car. The officer hit his brakes. The Oldsmobile did not stop. What followed was … Read more