Lost People of the Appalachian Mountains

hmm [Music] if you ever wondered why all the appalachian people were devoted to christ i think it was just the sheer nature god gave him to live in that made him modest and humble now here's the view looking up now this would have been made to see down in the valley but to me it's almost like a ram head with the mouth and horns going down around the side of the head just the odd way it was stacked up there just makes you wonder who will lay these huge stone you just look down you can see how far it really is a long way down this wall goes for four and a half miles if you ever travel deep in the woods and find the old homesteads of the people that sell this country sometimes you just gotta travel back in and uh look around look for the rocks hey take a look at how they laid these fire rocks up here on an angle so the spoke flows up and it came up this traveling back in the woods i found this old uh cemetery it's uh looks like most of the people are out of here by 1880s this is 1882. um just a couple things here they built a wall around that cemetery this is unreal as you can see right here this was dug out deep within the earth these sand springs that these indians found are one of the most natural and clear springs you're going to find and this thing just it survived all these years this here is deep within the earth this water coming straight up out of this sand because these sand pockets allow the water to shoot from hundreds and thousands of feet below now imagine walking through here in the 1800s and seeing this outcrop of rocks and this cave going back in here so the man that lived here he uh would have built his cabin the log cabin across and i'm going to show you a picture he took he would have been here by himself as uh i'm told by this older gentleman that he would have pulled the string to the camera just to get a view of how this guy would have lived up here he would have stopped by and stayed here probably temporary but you can just look around and see it it's a cozy little spot and it would have been a place for one person maybe two at the most but there is things here there's uh past history left so there's an old piece of stove and if you look at it closely that probably would have been part of the lid at the time head out this here old railroad bed and i found this cave now in this cave tunnel used to be an old railroad tunnel they started they dug it about half mile deep and i guess the iron ore business wasn't so good so they they quit but a lot of things you find it's awesome they cut these rocks i'm sure they did a lot by hand you can see all the old different sediments in them rocks right now it's full of water but we'll head in sometime here i thought i'd take you guys inside today it's a little dangerous okay i'm gonna venture in here i don't know what you'll find in these caves you can see the old iron ore pieces that were in here they chiseled them out and guys worked hard [Music] this goes back in here what's that and bats are after me now let's get out of here hey oh bats i'm stinking means things here they come right now we're in a place where my grandpa was young and he actually cut these fields out from raw wilderness places that were not touched for years and he made these fields we're going to go down the stream [Applause] down in this valley here right there would be your house so you when you look out at your house you'd see your fence down here holding your animals evening's coming here in st anthony's wilderness area and i made it over here to clarks creek and i'm going to show you this old iron forge the iron furnace it is tall they got trees growing out of it so you get you a little closer here a lot of stuff in these here mountains if you look close here into the brick sure it's not the safest they put iron up there you can see the remains and the amount of fire that was in here to work down that iron ore out of the rock there it is looks like they have like a tear up top there let's take a look in this old furnace up here we're gonna take the flashlight maybe we can see some more stuff okay here we go on that side entrance i showed you there's the bracing they had old cast iron pull looks like here's the beginning of that furnace i wanted to show you this old bridge i mean nice arch bridge for the railroad falling apart so it's still here you see they really built this train track up high above the mountains [Music] okay this is a few things i'm carrying with now here i got an old picture of stoney creek and this is called cold springs and what they had was old motel and building and houses little buildings here and we're gonna go down we're gonna find we found the railroad station where it would have been not much here but uh we're going to go down because i'm sure we're going to find something where these houses were i think the easiest thing to find would be this so let's see what we can find okay here's the right corner of that big motel i was telling you about as you can see the trees have grown inside of it already all right here's uh steps leading to that building just to the right of that motel it's almost connected but it isn't and these are the steps you probably would have walked in front of the motel and up here to where the building was with the flag maybe that was the head of the motel area so let's take a look inside this house i don't know if you can see or not but there's the old windows they're cut out in the back there for the house maybe a water tower area maybe you guys know a little more about these but it probably held the water and i'm looking around here and like here's parts of an old plate our clients were down here at the smoke hole a nice place to be this is where my grandpa george silks he used to log in these mountains and this used to be an old motel here and they still got the stone foundation left okay boys this is where you get your drink that's the old spring that the log can't use my grandpa use this years ago when it was operating he brought me down here we call this area the smoke hole and we usually see a lot of bear around here but you can see that water even though it's not tampered with much it's clean just wanted to video this old water tower old cedar shingles are still there that's what the fella used to water his garden and it's like a three-story water tower two stories of area to put stuff here's part of the old mansion a lot of elaborate stone work see the old lights still there the view out across great view pretty neat place i'm trying to get you a good view well here's the old house you can see the old notching and he kept it original right along the mountain here what remains old history i'm going to take a gander or how old fella used to live there's these guys old skillet and stoves the man lived rural now i can't wander around too far in here i didn't think it would be safe so i'm not gonna walk in see his old cups he lives like a true appalachian this [Applause] man [Music] here's old henry moonshine's tombstone that's all i did back then did a lot for the community a lot for the church i'm going to take you with here and show you the old railroad ties things on this stack lots of railroad ties and i'm sure they had a lot to get rid of so they stacked them here they're still in pretty good shape yet i'm sure if you look at them there's the old iron inside them there's more of the numbers 28 24. here's one t b they had them all labeled they knew where they went you don't see this every day spring run through a towel railroad ties pick a hook an old steam powered engine up to here to pump the well you can see it pump the water back and forth instead of doing it by hand just another old thing on my way back i wanted to show you still standing it's got the old wood shingles on the top and they used to treat it with oil instead of painting the barns and they they're still around the day see how they lap boards it's not your standard seed or shingles and they put them old uh snow guards up there they went to all the hard work of building an event the little boys had it nice back then [Applause] so here's dinosaur rock and right over next to it is a strange formation of rock over this old incline up here up this stream and i did some research what i came up with is back in 1908 there was a logger that didn't want to have a whole team of mules 20 team a mule so he made an incline out of stone to go the whole way down the mountain two and a half miles or so so we're gonna look at it and see the amount of work that one involved with this stone incline down the mountain so let's take a look we just walked through everything that was washed out and that's pretty amazing years ago from strip mining that settlement down below cold springs they took all the coal out and the acid from the coal brings out that iron in the stone so we're left with orange springs they should call it orange springs instead of yellow and orange rocks a couple pieces of clothes inclined plane sure is interesting feet just to pile up all them stones save on some horses right here's the top of the mountain we're on the very top of the incline plane and from from what i'm seeing here on this ledge they built the whole way up the trail they put coal on top and i'm guessing that made a smooth road until smashed down all right we made it to the top and i just wanted to show you again i tried earlier but it was raining too no one knows the exact purpose of this tower it was built in 1851 so over 160 years ago it was 40 feet tall or more and it's not quite that tall now i'll show you the top and how it fell over over time if you look up this thing this thing is a brute standing real tall on top of the mountain just sitting up here by itself in the middle of nowhere but the rocks are about ready to come off we're going to look down here at the bottom search around for some other stuff but the rocks they used were humongous and now it's just covered in under brush they build a retaining wall here next to this tower you can see it just split right up the middle just wanted to show you the view down the incline would work good for coal or lumber better than using horses farm and i've since learned that this is built a long time ago in the 1600s perhaps by the hessians used as slaves the owners of this farm territory now it's all mountain ground but you can just see the hard work they put into that it's just an awesome view of what history used to be and you think about the old-timers that were here years ago in the pow camp how many prisoners of war that were here that could have changed history if it wasn't for our troops being here all right so i'm walking through the mountain here at an old military camp as an interrogation camp for world war ii and i'm going to explain more first i'm going to show you the old sites i found the rocks where the buildings were this was a secret hidden deep in the mountains where hardly anybody knew about there was only two of these big interrogation places in america and this is one of them this is first camp uh made by conservationists in the early 30s and it was taken over for world war ii and i want to show you the old building foundations that are left over up in these mountains here so just stick with me and we'll we'll look around here and see what kind of buildings we can find hidden way up in the mountains now this is the civilian conservation corps office so here's a big concrete circle a lot of inscriptions on it i think this was from the prisoner of war camp you can see the symbol up here we're going to take a look up this way and looking for an old fountain somebody told me about that's up here in the mountains it used to be the center where they walked up to their camp civilian corpse and probably the center of the pow camp this is an awesome sight this would have been the fountain that they made originally conservation corps and you can see you look in here you can see old wire they use the old pipe pulled this old fountain together just back into the mountain here you know history just waiting for people to find and you just gotta look around and ask people and this is a great historic spot i mean you look and just think what did they put on that rock in the middle who was here and what kind of drills did they do what kind of soldiers were through this military camp how many japanese did they have in here interrogating and i'm going to show you a few things i researched later on this video a few pictures it might help give you a better visual what things were and these huge towering trees that they have in here are amazing now this here rock marks the headquarters the staff office and the nurses building but it's pretty unique it's made out of that reddish pink stone sandstone and i'm not sure exactly the purpose maybe when everything was all fixed up it just had an arrow right here right here's the tip of the arrow now here's an old bath house you know whether they use that pipe for a drain but over here you look whatever the remains were of this some kind of well probably be a good idea old tile it still remains and it's like that's the corner of the building it just went up through here and there's old set of steps there now this is the devil's race course miles and miles three to four miles i've just pulverized stoned laying from what was the same exact saddle as that wall that i showed you it's just breathtaking just the amount of rubble that's here it's unreal way back in here and not every person sees this you have to take it and go way back in the wilderness just to see something like this the most intriguing part of all this is the rattling run that runs underneath it people think you know they know where everything goes got everything under control down here is a creek you'll never get to and i'm trying to get you close here where you can hear the gurgling i hope you can hear that but you look deep in them rocks you may never find it and they never see it but it is there sometimes you get close to it there's a good spot to hear rattling run lots of rattlesnakes and this is rattlesnake territory rattlesnake season okay time for call quits today and we're gonna head to sleep here so good night straight to seven o'clock in the morning i'm at roush creek settlement area there's nothing left here but rocks and old foundations we're gonna take a look around and we're going to travel up through the coal country on the appalachian trail upper bag take a look at all these sites that are left in time gone by right here where we camped is the ralph creek settlement and if i remember correctly i think there was 1100 people living here and you can see why they call it stony creek now here looks to me like a humongous well and rocks have been piled up since it was used but it's right along the roush creek and you can see how they stack the stone in early times [Music] very huge well there was a wall for sure maybe even an entryway there the remains of an old cemetery back in here to remember the people i imagine one like that that's back in the mid 1800s for sure a lot of memory just in a rock now here off the beaten path found this amazing relic from like the times of them digging coal there's a cold digger i mean you can see this it's just amazing stuff that's left behind the history and hardly anybody knows it's here it's just amazing that it just lasts people uh you know would really appreciate seeing this and i'm going to show you around here take a look at them treads now that's the old-school technology big cast iron plate you know it's still remaining and look how thick that is that frame for the wheels and the little tiny rollers underneath that thing could have been business back then take a look at the pulley system them cables and think of all the work they did think of this no bucket like this digging away making ends meet think of the man that operated this in the 1800s early 1900s the old foot pedals the levers there's levers all the way back through amazing pulley system gears back there now that is impressive let's take a look inside the back there you go there's the engine probably a little newer than i expected that has to be in the early it 1900s older than that it's amazing what's the name on there you guys got that s t o r h e y anybody knows comment found a name in the back call this the general you know every time i come up here to this tower more of a piece of history fall off so that's why i came here again just want to remind you guys the history that's out there this tower is a mystery to people it's probably built by the native americans if not before that it's an obelisk tower it's very interesting to think of what would went on this mountain and the significance of this tower and they are shaped different if you look at the center it may have been opened in the center it's interesting to see it's worth braving the weather and it's worth the time we take a look closer i've noticed the mortar is different also but this is a redder stone the color is definitely interesting to take you to the back of this here but look at the multi-colored stone and if you look close yellows orange red black burgundy it was the whole way up like that a shaky looking tower but i originally it was three times this size looking at the remains of history long ago things that are forgotten i'm with an older gentleman and he's showing me history that most people don't even know it's not written down but right here is an old coal mine a lot of things caved in since years gone by but there's still relics and people walk by areas like this all the time and we're looking at a coal pile he said he's been walking through here since he was younger his coal pile was 30 feet high and he's watched it collapse over the years the cold must be going down through into an old dig out area and we're walking through he's showing the other coal mines but here's a neat area where there used to be a shaker on top here to separate the coal and you can see the flat area where the building was right there i mean you look around there's there's even 10 remaining right there i mean it's just a glimpse of history that's lost and we're really far back in the wilderness area going on a nice walk today but there you can see more of the remnants of history we're looking down over a coal bank and that would have been maybe part of the shaker there's an old piece of metal there and right in here was a visitor looking at us right at our feet many rattlesnakes out this way most people would just see this as an ordinary spring puking out all this orange oranges yellow sediment what we have here is an old coal mine very deep below the water and it's pushing up all the water out of that coal mine and that's the remains of history

Channel: wildernessfreak81

Views: 292,306

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Id: yC8XNCa_90w

Length: 37min 14sec (2234 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020