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PODCAST

Hometown History

Discover forgotten stories from small-town America that never made it into history books. Hometown History is the podcast uncovering hidden American history—overlooked events, local mysteries, and untold tragedies from communities across the nation. Every week, meticulous research brings pre-2000 small-town stories to life in 20-minute episodes. From forgotten disasters to local legends, hidden chapters to pivotal moments, each episode explores a different town's overlooked history. Perfect for

history

All Episodes

23:02

Waterbury, Vermont: The Asylum That Turned a Towns...

Hometown History ·

2026/04/07

In 1891, the first twenty-five patients stepped off a train and walked into the Vermont State Asylum for the Insane in Waterbury, a sprawling brick-and-stone campus built along a ridge above the Winooski River. The facility was supposed to heal broken minds through fresh air and structured labor. Instead, it grew into something the entire state whispered about -- a place so defined by confinement that saying someone "ought to go to Waterbury" became shorthand for madness itself.This episode

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16:06

Riceville, Maine: The Ghost Town Whose Plague Never...

Hometown History ·

2026/03/31

Episode SummaryIn the deep forests of Hancock County, Maine, there's a place that time forgot--Riceville, a company town that once thrived around a tannery on Buffalo Stream. For over a century, whispers have circulated about a plague that supposedly wiped out the entire population overnight, with tales of bodies in the streets and a mass grave hidden somewhere in the woods. The truth is far more human, and perhaps more unsettling: Riceville died not from disease, but from a single catastrophic

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18:04

Prudence Island: The Keeper Who Relit the Light After...

Hometown History ·

2026/03/24

I have covered a lot of tragedies on this show, but this one hit different. George Gustavus lost his wife and his twelve-year-old son when a seventeen-foot storm surge destroyed his home during the 1938 hurricane. He was pulled from the water half a mile away. And that same night--still soaking wet, still grieving--he climbed back up the lighthouse tower and helped restore the beacon. The light at Prudence Island has never gone dark since. Some stories remind you what duty really means.Advertising

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19:28

Watch Hill, Rhode Island: The Fort Road Massacre That...

Hometown History ·

2026/03/17

Episode SummaryOn September 21, 1938, a Category 3 hurricane racing northward at sixty miles an hour blindsided the wealthy summer colony of Watch Hill, Rhode Island. With no radar, satellites, or modern forecasting, residents had almost no warning before a wall of water--estimated at fifty feet high--rolled over Fort Road's exclusive Napatree Point peninsula. Forty-two people were trapped in their Victorian summer cottages. Fifteen didn't survive. Those who lived rode debris across Little

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21:49

Deal Beach, New Jersey: 240 Immigrants Drowned 150...

Hometown History ·

2026/03/10

The Wreck of the New Era: A Maritime Disaster That Changed American RescueOn November 13, 1854, the residents of Deal Beach, New Jersey were awakened not by the gale-force winds rattling their windows, but by the desperate, unceasing clanging of a ship's bell cutting through the storm. Through the fog and driving rain, they saw what would become one of the most haunting sights in American maritime history: a massive three-masted clipper ship, stuck fast on a sandbar just 500 yards from shore,

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16:42

Hazardville, Connecticut: When Gunpowder Made—and...

Hometown History ·

2026/03/03

190: Hazardville, Connecticut: When Gunpowder Made—and Destroyed—a TownSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hometownhistory/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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17:56

Ord, Nebraska: The Teenage Teacher Who Saved 13...

Hometown History ·

2026/02/24

On January 12, 1888, nineteen-year-old Minnie Freeman stood in a one-room schoolhouse six miles south of Ord, Nebraska, teaching thirteen students their lessons on what seemed like an unusually warm winter morning. Forty degrees in January felt like spring, and her students had arrived without their heavy coats. By mid-afternoon, everything would change. An arctic front racing south from Canada at unprecedented speed—seven hundred and eighty miles in twelve hours—was about to transform ordinary

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19:39

Lewistown, Montana: When the Guide Became the Killer...

Hometown History ·

2026/02/17

In 1889, the Montana frontier witnessed a cold-blooded betrayal when a trusted hunting guide turned killer. What began as an expedition into the wilderness ended in murder when greed overcame loyalty. The guide who was supposed to lead them to game instead led them to their graves. This is the story of trust broken, justice pursued, and the harsh realities of life in the untamed West.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hometownhistory/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries:

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20:28

Globe, Arizona: The Curse of Room 18—Two Miners, One...

Hometown History ·

2026/02/10

187: Globe, Arizona: The Curse of Room 18—Two Miners, One Deadly RoomSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hometownhistory/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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19:12

Taos, New Mexico: The Headless Body in the Fortress...

Hometown History ·

2026/01/27

On July 3, 1929, U.S. Deputy Marshal Jim Martinez scaled the walls of a fortress-like mansion in the heart of Taos, New Mexico. What he found inside would spark one of the American Southwest's most enduring mysteries—a bloated, headless corpse dressed in the unmistakable clothing of Arthur Rochford Manby, the 70-year-old English con man whom locals considered the most hated person in town.The hastily convened coroner's jury reached a swift conclusion: natural causes. The severed head, they

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18:13

East Montpelier, Vermont: The 14-Hour Marriage That...

Hometown History ·

2026/01/20

On September 5th, 1889, George Gould walked up the path to the Cutler farm in East Montpelier, Vermont, with his new wife Laura. They had been married for barely fourteen hours. By noon, George would be dead—shot in the face at point-blank range by a man who had waited twenty-two years for his chance.The murder of George Gould sparked one of the strangest legal cases in Vermont history. What began as a simple crime of passion became a decades-long tragedy involving a scandalous courtroom confession,

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23:13

Turtle Lake, North Dakota: The Wolf Family Murders of...

Hometown History ·

2026/01/13

On April 22, 1920, someone entered a farmhouse three miles north of Turtle Lake, North Dakota, armed with a shotgun and a hatchet. By morning, eight people lay dead—seven members of the Wolf family and their teenage hired hand. Only eight-month-old Emma Wolf survived, left crying in her crib for two days while her family's bodies grew cold around her.The Wolf family were German-Russian immigrants, part of a wave of settlers who had fled Tsarist oppression to build new lives on the Great Plains

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19:42

Boise City, Oklahoma: The Night America Bombed Its...

Hometown History ·

2026/01/06

On July 5, 1943, just hours after Fourth of July celebrations had ended, the residents of Boise City, Oklahoma woke to the sound of explosions. Bombs were falling from the sky, and in the chaos, terrified citizens assumed the worst—that America was under attack. What they didn't know was that the bombs raining down on their tiny Panhandle town weren't coming from Germany or Japan. They were coming from the United States Army.A B-17 Flying Fortress crew from Dalhart Army Air Base in Texas had

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23:38

Opelousas, Louisiana: The Boy Two Mothers Claimed—A...

Hometown History ·

2026/01/03

186: Opelousas, Louisiana: The Boy Two Mothers Claimed—A 92-Year DNA MysterySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hometownhistory/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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23:38

Opelousas, Louisiana: The Boy Two Mothers Claimed—A...

Hometown History ·

2026/01/03

186: Opelousas, Louisiana: The Boy Two Mothers Claimed—A 92-Year DNA MysterySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hometownhistory/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

en

21:24

Edgefield, South Carolina: The Devil's Bargain Murder...

Hometown History ·

2025/12/30

In February 1849, an enslaved sawmill worker named Appling approached his owner with an extraordinary proposal: he would murder Martin Posey's wife Matilda in exchange for a promise of freedom. What followed exposed the brutal mechanics of what historians call "criminal bargains"—informal contracts between enslavers and enslaved people that the legal system barely acknowledged.Martin Posey, a man of modest origins who married into the wealthy Holmes family, had earned the nickname

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15:56

Hagerstown, Indiana: The Blind Engineer Who Invented...

Hometown History ·

2025/12/23

In 1896, a five-year-old boy in Hagerstown, Indiana, lost his sight in a workshop accident. Doctors couldn't save his vision, and by age seven, Ralph Teetor would never see again. What happened next defied every expectation of that era—an age when blind children were typically institutionalized and trained only for basket-weaving.Instead, Ralph's parents raised him as if nothing had changed. They let him explore the machines in his family's factory. They sent him to public school. They

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26:15

Gay Head, Massachusetts: 103 Souls Lost Half a Mile...

Hometown History ·

2025/12/16

In the early hours of January 18, 1884, the passenger steamer City of Columbus struck the jagged underwater rocks of Devil's Bridge off Gay Head, Massachusetts—now called Aquinnah—sending 103 people to their deaths within sight of the shore they could see but never reach. This maritime catastrophe remains the deadliest shipwreck in New England history for the nineteenth century, a tragedy that exposed fatal gaps in passenger safety while simultaneously revealing the extraordinary heroism of a

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19:42

Gauley Bridge, West Virginia: America's Deadliest...

Hometown History ·

2025/12/09

Episode SummaryIn 1931, seventeen-year-old Dewey Flack stepped off a train in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, carrying a one-way ticket and a promise to send money home to his family. Two weeks later, he was dead—his lungs filled with crystalline silica dust so pure it turned them to stone. His death certificate said pneumonia. It was a lie.Dewey was one of approximately 764 workers who died during construction of the Hawks Nest Tunnel, a three-mile hydroelectric project that has been called

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24:44

Wheeling, West Virginia: When Steel Workers Became...

Hometown History ·

2025/12/02

The StoryIn the depths of the Great Depression, when unemployment in West Virginia topped 25% and families struggled to afford even basic necessities, something remarkable happened in Wheeling. Steel workers—machinists, crane operators, stenographers—became national radio celebrities. Their show, "It's Wheeling Steel," reached millions of Americans coast to coast and proved that working-class people weren't just audiences—they were artists.The man behind this unlikely experiment was

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