Reading Time: 4 minutesIt’s a quiet morning in Fries, Virginia, and the New River is doing what it’s always done—slipping past the banks with ageless calm. The cotton mill that gave the town its name and purpose is long gone, but you’d swear you can still hear the echoes. Not of the looms—they stopped decades ago—but of something softer: hikers crunching gravel on […]
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhen most people think of African Americans in the 19th century, two images dominate: Southern slaves or Northern abolitionists. But tucked deep in the hills and hollows of the mountain South, there lived thousands of men and women who didn’t fit either category. They were Freemen in Appalachia—Black Americans who were not enslaved yet not fully free—and their stories have […]
Reading Time: 5 minutesWe all say the same thing the first time we see the Blue Ridge Parkway: “The view is incredible.” The Blue Ridge Parkway, with its winding curves and postcard overlooks, offers some of the most stunning scenery in the eastern U.S. It’s the kind of road that makes you slow down, roll down the windows, and breathe a little deeper. […]
Reading Time: 5 minutesWe’re taught the Trail of Tears as an ending—a final march west, away from ancestral homelands. But what if it wasn’t the end? What if some never left? In 1838, under orders from the federal government, thousands of Cherokee men, women, and children were rounded up at gunpoint and forced to march nearly 1,000 miles to Indian Territory. Thousands died […]
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn Jim Crow Virginia, the power of a single piece of paper could decide your future—or erase your past. In 1924, the Commonwwealth of Virginia passed a law that tried to nail down something as messy and human as race using bureaucratic language and the force of law. One drop of the wrong blood, and you weren’t white anymore. Just […]
Reading Time: 5 minutesThe Crooked Road isn’t just a mountain ramble. It’s a sound—a fiddle tune rolling through the hills, a banjo ringing against the Blue Ridge backdrop. It’s the laughter of dancers at a Friday night jamboree, the reverent silence after a ballad, the echo of generations who’ve carried these songs across porches, church pews, and festival stages. Music isn’t just played […]
Reading Time: 6 minutesEditor’s Note: The following is a fictionalized letter inspired by Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones) real-life words and activism. While this letter is imagined, the events it describes—the brutality of the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek strike, the suffering of the miners, and the role of labor in America—are deeply rooted in history. An opposing perspective and commentary follow the […]
Reading Time: 4 minutesIf you walk through downtown Point Pleasant, West Virginia, you’ll find statues, murals, and souvenir shops dedicated to the town’s most famous resident. No, not the mayor. The Point Pleasant Mothman—a seven-foot, red-eyed, winged enigma who first made headlines in 1966. While most small towns claim fame through historical figures, sports legends, or quirky roadside attractions, Point Pleasant leaned all […]
Reading Time: 3 minutesImagine solving your own murder—from beyond the grave. According to the Greenbrier Ghost legend, young Zona Heaster Shue returned from the dead to point a spectral finger at her killer. Some dismiss it as folklore, but the facts tell a story stranger than fiction. The Death of Zona Heaster Shue Zona Heaster Shue had married a blacksmith named Erasmus “Trout” […]
Reading Time: 5 minutesThe Road That Changed America Imagine standing at the edge of civilization, your worldly possessions packed onto a horse, your family by your side. The road ahead is no more than a rough footpath, cutting through dense forest and winding toward a mountain pass. You’ve heard the stories—of fertile land beyond the mountains, danger lurking in the woods, and families […]
