History
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: 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: 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 […]
Reading Time: 4 minutesLife on the early frontier often hinged on one thing: salt. It preserved food, kept animals and humans healthy, and was used as trade currency. Great battles were fought over it. Men died mining it. The salt trade on the Holston River wasn’t just a business; frontier economies rose and fell with the availability of salt. Before railroads cut through […]
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn the last days of the Civil War, as Richmond burned and the Confederacy fell apart, a desperate group rolled out of town. They carried something more valuable than weapons—they carried their stash of Confederate gold. This fortune, meant to keep the Confederacy alive, made its way south to Danville, Virginia. And then? It vanished. For over a century, treasure […]
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe Abduction On the Western Frontier of Virginia in 1776, life was a delicate balance between survival and danger. Boonesborough, in Kentucky County, VA, had been settled just a year earlier. A tenuous treaty between a handful of tribal leaders and the British government allowed the settlement. But many native warriors didn’t give a hoot about the White Man’s politics—they […]
Reading Time: 4 minutesDriving north on Interstate 77 near Wytheville, VA, just before where the highway crosses the New River, stands a tower made from field stone: The Jackson Ferry Shot Tower. For more than 30 years, until 1839, the Tower manufactured lead shot. It played a key role in transforming raw lead into musket shot, moving it through a carefully designed production […]
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe wind tore through the brakeman’s jacket as he inched along the top of a freight car, his boots skidding slightly on the frosted steel. Below him, the Blue Ridge Mountains stretched out in waves, shrouded in a foggy mist. The train groaned and shuddered as it hugged a curve, and he gripped the brake wheel tighter, bracing himself against […]
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe breaker boys’ story is one of stark contrasts: the innocence of childhood stolen by the grit and grime of industrial labor. Imagine being eight years old, bent over a conveyor belt, fingers raw and aching from hours of picking slate out of coal. The air is thick with black dust that coats your lungs and clogs your throat. This […]
