Welcome 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.www.storiesofappalachia.com
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Nov 14, 2026 · 15:15
In March 1910, floodwaters along the Ohio River carried the grand sternwheel riverboat Virginia far off course, into a flooded cornfield near Willow Grove, West Virginia. What…
Nov 7, 2026 · 17:05
In 1806, twelve-year-old Mary Doherty was accused of killing her father in Hawkins County, Tennessee. At her trial in Jonesborough, she remained silent and apparently unaware of…
Oct 31, 2026 · 12:57
David Hix was one of the earliest settlers in the high country of western North Carolina. He built a fortified home known as Hix’s Fort and became known for offering food and…
Oct 24, 2026 · 14:54
This week we have a traditional Appalachian folktale to share with you: the tale of Wicked John, a mean-spirited man whose dealings with a mysterious stranger set him on a path…
Oct 17, 2026 · 16:41
167 years ago this weekend, on the night of October 16, 1859, fiery abolitionist John Brown and his men set out toward Harpers Ferry and the federal armory located there. Brown…
Oct 10, 2026 · 22:31
This week we tell the story of the Wright-Reynolds feud and the legendary figure at its center: a man folks often called “Devil”: John Wesley Wright. Riding through the rugged…
Oct 3, 2026 · 23:02
This week Steve and Rod share the true survival story of Captain Robert A. Ragan. A schoolteacher and Union supporter from Cocke County in East Tennessee, Ragan was forced into…
Sep 26, 2026 · 18:02
Before Robert Fulton, there was James Rumsey, an inventor who defied his skeptics and the power of the Potomac River at Shepardstown, in what’s now West Virginia. Today we tell…
Sep 19, 2026 · 17:33
Before Elkmont became a tourist destination and eventually a ghost town, it was home to Levi Trentham, a mountain landowner, businessman, hunter, guide, and unofficial mayor. As…
Sep 12, 2026 · 15:12
In 1906, escaped convict Will Harris arrived in Asheville, North Carolina, and unleashed one of the most violent crime sprees in the city’s history. After killing several men,…
Sep 5, 2026 · 13:08
Richard Trotter was killed at the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774, leaving behind his wife, Anne. Instead of living quietly, raising their son, she became a scout and courier on…
Aug 29, 2026 · 22:20
For decades a preacher would come to the Bristol, Virginia, train station to meet the incoming trains, looking for couples who’d come to the city to elope. He claimed to have…
Aug 22, 2026 · 29:46
In 1794, thousands of federalized militia marched into western Pennsylvania to put down an uprising by American farmers. Their crime? Making whiskey and refusing to pay a federal…
Aug 15, 2026 · 14:48
Dillion “Old Dill” Asher was one of the early pioneers of southeastern Kentucky, a frontier soldier and farmer who became the toll keeper at the Cumberland River ford at what’s…
Aug 8, 2026 · 15:13
In 1779, on the Georgia frontier, a group of armed Loyalist soldiers forced their way into Nancy Hart's cabin, demanding a hot meal from a helpless woman and her daughter.…
Aug 1, 2026 · 22:45
The infamous Killing Rock massacre ended with the deaths of a moonshiner and his wife and several of their friends on a mountain along the Virginia-Kentucky border. It began…
Jul 25, 2026 · 21:43
In the winter of 1789, Cherokee war leader John Watts made a daring decision. Instead of returning to the Chickamauga towns as he usually did for the winter, he established a…
Jul 18, 2026 · 15:33
In the late 1780s a man from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, William Hewitt, crossed the Ohio River seeking to find solitude in the Appalachian wilderness after heartbreak changed…
Jul 11, 2026 · 14:36
In September 1894, a routine drilling operation on a Tyler County, West Virginia, farm broke into a massive natural gas pocket, unleashing one of the most powerful and…
Jul 4, 2026 · 32:07
Vincent “Clawhammer” Witcher became one of the most feared Confederate guerrilla leaders along the Virginia/Kentucky border in the Civil War. As the leader of what was called…
Jun 27, 2026 · 14:22
The early settlements along the Watauga and Holston Rivers in what’s now Tennessee were the very beginning of "The Wild West." While names like Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and…
Jun 20, 2026 · 16:04
In 1781, as the American Revolution raged, Appalachian settlers in what’s now West Virginia rose in armed rebellion against the Virginia government. Angry over crushing taxes,…
Jun 13, 2026 · 15:42
Quill Rose was a Confederate veteran, bear hunter, blacksmith, storyteller, and moonshiner who lived deep in the Smoky Mountains along Eagle Creek. In this episode of Stories of…
Jun 6, 2026 · 16:16
This week we have not one but two podcast episodes for you! In this one, we go to Glen Ferris, West Virginia, a town at the falls of the Kanawha River, to tell the story of the…
Jun 6, 2026 · 9:40
This week we have not one, but two episodes for you! For this story, we travel back to December of 1908, when people in Russell and Adair counties in Kentucky were shaken after…
May 30, 2026 · 20:41
In the late 1600’s, Dr. John Lederer, a German immigrant to the Virginia colony, became one of the first Europeans to explore the Appalachian region. Between 1669 and 1670,…
May 23, 2026 · 13:06
The highest mountain valley in Virginia is Burke’s Garden, also referred to as “God’s Thumbprint” for its bowl-like shape. It was here that something began killing sheep in the…
May 16, 2026 · 26:01
This week we tell the strange and little-known story of the Mountain Cove Community, a spiritualist commune founded in the mountains of what’s now West Virginia in the early…
May 9, 2026 · 18:29
In 1948, a small town in West Virginia became the center of a growing national fear over the perceived evil influence of comic books. There, in the town of Spencer, a…
May 2, 2026 · 25:25
George Washington Kirk was a carpenter from Greene County, Tennessee. He was also a feared and hated Union soldier/bushwhacker during the Civil War, operating in the mountains…
Apr 25, 2026 · 27:48
In 1755, the frontier settlement of Draper’s Meadow was shattered by a brutal Shawnee raid in which many settlers were killed and the survivors captured. Among those taken…
Apr 18, 2026 · 17:15
James Harrod was a soldier, a longhunter, an explorer and the man who founded Kentucky’s first permanent pioneer settlement. But in February 1792, the legendary Colonel Harrod…
Apr 11, 2026 · 14:57
Roger Tandy Quisenberry had every advantage in life: wealth, education, and opportunity, but chose a path few could understand. From the California Gold Rush to a dangerous…
Apr 4, 2026 · 17:39
In the spring of 1895, a sudden wage cut swept through the Flat Top-Pocahontas coal fields along the Virginia/West Virginia border, touching off one of the earliest large-scale…
Mar 28, 2026 · 16:39
Born aboard a ship of immigrants in the Atlantic Ocean, Kasper Mansker became a longhunter, venturing out to explore the wilderness of Kentucky and Tennessee from his home in…
Mar 21, 2026 · 19:56
Daniel Ellis of Carter County, Tennessee was a wagon maker who became one of the most successful guides of the Civil War. Living behind Confederate lines in East Tennessee, Ellis…
Mar 14, 2026 · 23:10
This week, Rod and Steve tell the story of Ray Vaughn Shores, better known as Von Shores, an Appalachian aviator and popular aerial daredevil in Southwest Virginia and Eastern…
Mar 7, 2026 · 18:34
This week, we tell a story from the lawless mountain border between western North Carolina and east Tennessee during the Civil War. As great battles raged elsewhere, outlaws and…
Feb 28, 2026 · 15:06
This week, Steve and Rod tell the story of Granville “Stick” McGhee and Walter “Brownie” McGhee, two brothers from East Tennessee whose music helped shape American blues and…
Feb 21, 2026 · 19:24
In 1730, seven Cherokee leaders traveled from their Appalachian home to the heart of London. Hand-picked by a Scottish adventurer named Alexander Cumming, they were presented to…
Feb 14, 2026 · 24:21
The Big Bull Tunnel in Wise County, Virginia looks like any other railroad tunnel, just a simple cut through a hillside. Looks, though, can be deceiving, as the tunnel’s history…
Feb 7, 2026 · 16:17
Today we tell not one but two stories, both involving the same community in Fannin County, Georgia. In 1864 two men, brothers-in-law Elisha Stanley and Evan Hughes, became the…
Jan 31, 2026 · 14:18
This week Rod and Steve tell the story of a gang of robbers who cast a long shadow over Ashe County, North Carolina in the unsettled years after the Civil War. One by one they…
Jan 24, 2026 · 16:06
This week’s story is the bizarre true tale of Leila Davidson Hansell, known as "The Sunshine Woman," and the controversy surrounding her final resting place in Hendersonville,…
Jan 17, 2026 · 22:41
Born in Blount County, Hut Amerine grew into one of East Tennessee’s most notorious moonshiners. After the Civil War, federal whiskey taxes ignited a bitter conflict between…
Jan 10, 2026 · 22:30
James Faye Hall, better known as Roy Hall, was born in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, in 1921. He died in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee in 1984. Between those dates is a story about a…
Jan 3, 2026 · 13:37
We’ve told the story of labor conflicts from Harlan, Kentucky to Blair Mountain, West Virginia. This week, we tell a story that’s not set in the Kentucky or West Virginia…
Dec 27, 2025 · 13:46
A once thriving lumber and mill town in the mountains of western North Carolina, Mortimer rose fast, becoming prosperous…until it was washed away twice in massive flooding…
Dec 20, 2025 · 12:06
This week Steve and Rod tell the story of a Christmas morning that ended in heartbreak instead of celebration. In 1882, a passenger train and a freight engine collided near…
Dec 13, 2025 · 21:53
John Pemberton Gatewood was a notorious Confederate bushwhacker/guerrilla leader. Born in Fentress County, Tennessee, in 1844, Gatewood's life took a dark turn after a Union…
Dec 6, 2025 · 17:51
Major Lewis Redmond’s story sounds like it comes from a 19th century dime novel. He was a Carolina moonshiner, an outlaw and, thanks to actually being in some of those dime…
Nov 29, 2025 · 16:55
In 1955, at the age of 67, Emma Gatewood became the first woman to solo thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to the top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine. In…
Nov 22, 2025 · 14:36
In 1909, a Johnson City businessman named A.J. Slagle was lured by promises of buried Spanish gold hidden in a Cocke County house. What began as a desperate bid to recover from…
Nov 15, 2025 · 16:09
Four years after the Hillsville courthouse shootout shocked Virginia, another one of the Allen brothers met a violent end. Jack Allen, brother of Floyd Allen, and once a…
Nov 8, 2025 · 17:44
After the Civil War, thousands of defeated Confederates refused to live under the Union flag. Instead, they packed up their families and headed for new lives in South America in…
Nov 1, 2025 · 20:46
In August 1925, two years before the famed Bristol Sessions, Ralph Peer and Okeh Records set up a temporary studio on the rooftop of Asheville’s brand-new Vanderbilt Hotel. Over…
Oct 25, 2025 · 20:33
This Halloween marks 10 years of stories from Rod and Steve; to mark the holiday and our tenth anniversary, we’re going to take you deep into the dark side of Appalachia with two…
Oct 18, 2025 · 17:54
We’ve told hundreds of stories about Appalachia, but few are as bizarre as the night a Kentucky drug smuggler named Andrew Thornton II fell to his death during a smuggling run…
Oct 11, 2025 · 15:48
In July, 1912, a joyful Fourth of July outing on a mountain turned into a tragedy when a crowded passenger coach collided head-on with a massive coal train on the Wilpen Branch…
Oct 4, 2025 · 22:19
In November 1861, a secret band of East Tennessee Unionists struck at the heart of Confederate supply lines by burning railroad bridges across the region. They believed the Union…
Oct 1, 2025 · 46:19
This week, we wrap up our commemoration of the first anniversary of Hurricane Helene by talking with Mitchell County’s David Biddix, who documented the effects of the storm and…
Sep 27, 2025 · 12:49
When Hurricane Helene tore through western North Carolina a year ago, it left behind washed-out roads, flooded homes, and communities cut off from each other. For first…
Sep 20, 2025 · 20:54
On the first anniversary of Hurricane Helene’s flooding in Appalachia, Rod and Steve share the story of Maria True, general manager of Jet Broadcasting in Erwin, Tennessee. When…
Sep 13, 2025 · 18:27
In July 1944, a troop train packed with new Army recruits derailed near Jellico, Tennessee, plunging into Clear Fork River. Thirty-five soldiers died and ninety-one were injured.…
Sep 6, 2025 · 19:09
In 1919, a nitroglycerin explosion near Torrent, Kentucky, killed four men and leveled a factory. Today we tell the story of that tragedy and the explosive history of oil well…
Aug 30, 2025 · 12:33
In 1750, surveyor Christopher Gist set out to explore the wilderness of what’s now Southwest Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and West Virginia. Hired by the Ohio Company, Gist mapped…
Aug 23, 2025 · 17:26
In March 1864, Union Colonel William B. Stokes and his cavalry were ambushed at Dug Hill, in Tennessee, leaving dozens of his men dead. Enraged, Stokes led a brutal raid on…
Aug 16, 2025 · 15:30
In the final years of the Civil War, a group of young women in Rhea County, Tennessee, made American history as the only known all-female cavalry unit: the Rhea County Spartans.…
Aug 9, 2025 · 15:54
In this episode, we tell the story of Henry Skaggs, one of the legendary Kentucky longhunters of the 18th century and his remarkable journey from his early days in Maryland to…
Aug 2, 2025 · 14:41
In 1918, the mountains of North Carolina erupted in quiet rebellion. Dozens of young men dodged the World War I draft, hiding in the backcountry with help from friends and…
Jul 26, 2025 · 26:34
In this episode we tell the story of Michael Stoner, a German-born frontiersman, longhunter, and close companion of Daniel Boone. From his early days in Pennsylvania to brutal…
Jul 19, 2025 · 12:50
On February 28, 1890, a long-simmering feud turned deadly in the halls of the U.S. Capitol. Former Kentucky Congressman William P. Taulbee was shot on the marble stairs by…
Jul 12, 2025 · 17:14
On June 23, 1944, a massive F4 tornado struck Shinnston, West Virginia, the deadliest tornado in the state’s history. This week we tell the story of the terrifying twister that…
Jul 5, 2025 · 17:05
In this episode, we tell the dramatic true story of Charles Jefferson Harrison, a respected San Antonio businessman who became one of Appalachia's most elusive train robbers.…
Jun 28, 2025 · 14:57
On December 14, 1910, a deadly explosion rocked the Greeno Mine in Tacoma, Virginia, claiming 14 lives and leaving a lasting mark on the Appalachian coalfields. Today we tell the…
Jun 21, 2025 · 14:18
A preacher with five wives, a kidnapped teenage girl, and a cross-country manhunt. This isn’t fiction, it’s the unbelievable true story of Joseph Herman Johnson, a Primitive…
Jun 14, 2025 · 12:39
In this episode we explore the lesser-known but historically rich Johnson City Sessions of 1928 and 1929. While the Bristol Sessions are often credited as the “Birthplace of…
Jun 7, 2025 · 15:50
Nannie Kelly Wright ran an iron furnace at a time when most women weren’t even allowed near one. Born in Kentucky, raised on the Ohio River, and later married into the iron…
May 31, 2025 · 16:58
William McClellan Ritter didn’t just cut down trees, he built an empire. In this week’s episode, we tell his story, from Pennsylvania farm boy to head of one of the world’s…
May 24, 2025 · 13:16
On a quiet Sunday morning in the spring of 1782, Pastor John Corbly and his family were headed for church when he realized he’d forgotten his Bible and turned back alone to get…
May 17, 2025 · 22:42
On this episode of the Stories podcast, we tell the dramatic tale of Gus McCoig, a Jefferson County boy who became one of East Tennessee’s most notorious Depression-era outlaws.…
May 10, 2025 · 12:30
Step back in time to the golden era of Appalachian luxury as we explore the rise and fall of Tate Springs, a once-famous resort in Bean Station, Tennessee. Known for its healing…
May 3, 2025 · 19:39
In the winter of 1779, a determined group of Appalachian settlers set out on a thousand-mile journey by river, led by Virginia surveyor John Donelson. Battling disease,…
Apr 26, 2025 · 14:26
Today we tell the story of the battle over the Tellico Dam, the last major project of the Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA's ambitious plans for the Tellico project included not…
Apr 19, 2025 · 13:44
Nearly twenty years before Tennessee was a state, William Bean built a cabin along the Watagua River and planted roots. In this episode, we tell the story of his journey from…
Apr 12, 2025 · 14:08
This week, Steve and Rod bring you the remarkable story of Isaac Cline, a Tennessee-born son of Appalachia who rose to become one of America’s most respected meteorologists. From…
Apr 5, 2025 · 16:20
In this episode of Stories of Appalachia, we tell the story of a shocking event in January 1927 in Jefferson County, Tennessee. That was when a prominent county businessman named…
Mar 29, 2025 · 17:53
In this episode, we tell the harrowing story of the Jellico explosion, a catastrophic event that shook the town of Jellico, Tennessee, on September 21, 1906. What began as a…
Mar 22, 2025 · 23:06
In this episode, we tell the inspiring story of the packhorse librarians, a group of determined women who brought literacy and hope to the remote hollers of Eastern Kentucky…
Mar 15, 2025 · 10:35
In this episode, we tell the strange tale of Polly Feltner, a young woman from Hyden, Kentucky, who vanished in 1897 under mysterious circumstances. What began as a search for a…
Mar 8, 2025 · 16:11
In this episode, we journey back to the mid-1700s to uncover the story of the Schwartzenau Brethren, also known as the Dunkards, who established one of the earliest settlements…
Mar 1, 2025 · 13:36
In this episode of the podcast, we tell the story of Reverend William Riley Rickman, a steadfast preacher who took on the liquor industry in Pocahontas, Virginia. Join Steve and…
Feb 22, 2025 · 18:30
Today, we tell the remarkable story of the Overmountain men, Appalachian frontiersmen from the far western parts of North Carolina and Virginia. As tensions escalated in the…
Feb 15, 2025 · 19:24
Today we tell the story of Jean Ritchie, the "Mother of Folk." Born in the small town of Viper, Kentucky, Jean captivated audiences worldwide, influencing legends like Bob Dylan…
Feb 8, 2025 · 18:18
Old Tassel, a prominent figure among the Overhill Cherokee, was a staunch advocate for peace during a period of conflict between them and the settlers moving into East Tennessee.…
Feb 1, 2025 · 15:16
Discover the fascinating story of Kentucky's unique soft drink, "Ale 8 One," in this episode of Stories of Appalachia. Join Steve and Rod as they tell the history of this…
Jan 25, 2025 · 27:30
By request of one of our listeners, this week we tell the story of Bad Tom Smith, a notorious figure at the very heart of the French-Eversole feud in Kentucky. As he grew up an…
Jan 18, 2025 · 13:37
Nimrod Jarrett Smith, born in 1832 near Murphy, North Carolina, was a member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee who played a crucial role in shaping the tribe’s future. His life…
Jan 11, 2025 · 13:54
At the beginning of the Civil War, the small Appalachian town of Philippi, Virginia, now West Virginia, became the site of the first organized land action of the conflict as the…
Jan 4, 2025 · 16:59
In the late 1920s and early 30s, the coal fields of Harlan County, Kentucky, became the backdrop for one of the darkest chapters in labor history. Known as Bloody Harlan, this…
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