Stay ConnectedWelcome to “Stories of Appalachia,” the podcast where hosts Steve Gilly and Rod Mullins have been unraveling the captivating history and folklore of the Appalachian region since 2015. Join them as they guide you through mist-covered mountains and winding rivers, exploring the stories that define the heart and soul of Appalachia.
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Copyright: © Copyright Steve Gilly
Today, Steve and Rod have not one story, not two stories, but THREE stories, along with a short story! This week is crime week, and on this podcast we tell the stories of two Scott County, Virginia, prisoners who managed to escape and were later caught by chance, one in the 1850’s and the other […]
In January, 1964, a crippled B-52 was on its way home from Massachusetts to an airbase in Georgia, when it ran into a heavy snowstorm. The plane’s vertical stabilizer (the tail) was ripped off, and it went into a spin, crashing on Big Savage Mountain in Western Maryland. Two of the five crewmen survived the […]
In 1926, Prohibition was in full force, and the Commonwealth of Virginia had prohibition enforcement agents employed across the state, looking for illegal liquor. In Dickenson County, Virginia, that man was James Sherman Mullins, who was on the trail of the Dickenson County Sheriff, Pridemore Fleming, on suspicions that he was helping local moonshiners and […]
In the last part of the nineteenth century, newspapers across America were obsessed with tales of blood feuds in Appalachia, the best known of which is the Hatfield-McCoy feud. At the time, however, no other feud got more coverage than that between the French and Eversole families of Hazard, Kentucky. Private armies battling each other, […]
In 1982, Knoxville, Tennessee, hosted a Worlds Fair. The fair was a success, breaking even, but it led to the downfall of the Butcher banking empire in East Tennessee. On this episode of the podcast, Steve and Rod tell the story of Jake and C.H. Butcher and the Knoxville World’s Fair. We’re on Facebook @facebook.com/storiesofappalachia. […]
The people who settled Appalachia were tough. They’d have to be to carve a home out of the forests and mountainsides of the area. In 1777, two girls, Polly Alley and Jane Whittaker, proved how tough they were when they escaped Indian captivity in Ohio and made their way back home to Scott County in […]
In the early 20th century, there was an awakening across Appalachia, with Pentecostal churches coming into being across the area. One of the odder branches of Pentecostalism involved the handling of deadly snakes to prove your devotion to the Lord. Snake handling flourished during the Depression, but after World War II it was banned across […]
Every year the Tri State Singing Convention would come to Big Stone Gap, Virginia, bringing together the most popular southern gospel groups in the world to play for a packed audience. At the Convention in 1959, tragedy struck in the form of a bridge collapse. On this episode, we tell the story of the collapse […]
On July 27th, 1996, the Atlanta Summer Olympic Games were rocked with an explosion which killed one person outright and led to a heart attack that killed another, as well as wounding many more. The man who set off that bomb, as well as three others at abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, led authorities […]
After the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court, schools began preparing to integrate across the South, with the first school scheduled to be Clinton High School in the East Tennessee town of Clinton. The end of segregation brought protests, threats, beatings, and a bombing that destroyed the high school. On […]
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