If you visit nearby Linville Falls or the Cascades off the Blue Ridge Parkway and generally there are people everywhere. Why have we been drawn to waterfalls for millennia? That question occurred to me recently while chasing waterfalls in and around Asheville, Hendersonville and Brevard, North Carolina. I often say…
In today’s edition of the Appalachian Moments, we follow a youngster from Helton, North Carolina, who once struck out the mighty Babe Ruth. How many other sons of the North Carolina mountains can claim that they struck out the Sultan of Swat? An athletic, but brainy kid named Monte Weaver.…
In today’s edition of the Appalachian Moments, outside of Buffalo Bill Cody, no one from the American Wild West has anything on Appalachia’s own Devil John Wright. John Wesley Wright was born in Letcher County, Kentucky in 1844. This bouncing boy would come of age during a chapter of Appalachian…
In Part Two of our Junior Johnson edition of Appalachian Moments we go from pole position to pit row. When Johnson finished up his brief stint in prison for making moonshine, he resumed his legal racing career in 1954, and had his breakout year in ’55 winning five races. Early…
In this edition of Appalachian Moments, we trade paint with NASCAR legend and Hall-of-Famer Junior Johnson. Robert Glenn Johnson, Jr. was born in 1931 in the North Carolina foothills of Wilkes County. Junior’s father was a lifelong bootlegger making moonshine, in fact the family history of home brewing goes back…
In today’s edition of Appalachian Moments, we check in with the rich and famous at one of the few remaining grand manor hotels in the North Carolina High Country, the Green Park Inn. Opened in 1891 by a group of 3 businessmen from Lenoir, including a Civil War Veteran Major…
Family and Labor Day! Because our usual Labor Day Holiday plans for next weekend have been hijacked by The Covid, let’s go back in time to share some of some cherished traditions of the holiday weekend! One of our family traditions was making homemade ice cream. But not just any…
In today’s Appalachian Moments Blog we get personal with the Virginia Creeper but also watch it leave the station for the last time. Even though the Creeper wasn’t primarily a passenger train, it was always a thrill to ride to the next town, sit by an open window dodging the…
In today’s Appalachian Moments Blog, we tackle the daunting task of building a railroad from Abingdon, Virginia to Todd, North Carolina as we take a ride on the Creeper… For nearly 20 years, beginning in the 1880s, the prospect for a railroad coming into the mountains of Virginia and North…
Since we’ve been featuring barns and haylofts recently, in today’s podcast, we tune into North Carolina High Country natives who were radio superstars in the 1930s and 40s, popularly known as the Hayloft Sweethearts! Born in Boone, North Carolina, young Myrtle…was a prodigy of sorts, at least her father thought…
