St. Mary’s College and Chapel had a good run but, in the end, never had a prayer. The imposing structures were too big to survive disuse, the old grounds too perfect a milieu for mischief. Now all that’s left are … Continue reading →
The wreckage of a remote plane crash. An old carbide gas reservoir. A vanished gristmill. And lots of forgotten family burial plots. These are a few traces Sue Eisenfeld has teased from the wilderness of Shenandoah National Park. The physical … Continue reading →
The fields that line the Chesapeake Bay’s back roads make for pretty scenery. Full of fruit in summer, fallow in winter, the farmland has that rustic, rural charm that attracts so many people to the countryside. For all its appeal, … Continue reading →
Most folks figure that the Poe Toaster is stone, stone dead. It’s getting on three years now he’s been a no-show for the macabre middle-of-the-night tributes to Baltimore’s most famous decedent. If the idea toasting tortured authors is your thing, … Continue reading →
Firehawk sidles his kayak up to the reedy bank and hops out, shells crunching underfoot. I would’ve never found this spot hidden among endless flats of phragmites, but he knows exactly where it is. He comes here occasionally, paying a … Continue reading →
Three feet down, the men struck something: a pine box. Waterlogged and rotting, yes, but a pine box nonetheless–exactly what they’d come looking for. They pried off the lid. A man’s spine was stuck to it. They closed the coffin, … Continue reading →
Tucked in the snaking suburban streets of Loudoun County, Virginia are the remnants of a construction project gone wrong. This isn’t some formerly up-and-coming neighborhood that fell victim to the housing bust. This failure is a hundred-fifty years old. Look … Continue reading →
In the mountains of southern Pennsylvania, there’s a 13-mile stretch of highway where the rules of the road don’t apply. You can change lanes without signaling. Heck, you can do it without even looking. Of course, you won’t be in … Continue reading →
The story is familiar. An African American woman boards a bus in the segregated South and sits in the back, as required by law. The bus fills and the driver demands that she give up her seat to white riders. … Continue reading →
In the dense woods east of Richmond, Virginia is a notorious ghost town–an empty grid of grown-over streets lined by sidewalks that sprout trees and sewers choked with decades of leaf litter. An idle and rust-crowned water tower looms high … Continue reading →
No telling what John Lennon thought when he hopped out of his Rolls Royce at Poplar Grove and saw the tide mill off in the distance. Perhaps the structure’s rustic charm inspired some nascent song lyrics or signaled the peace … Continue reading →
There’s nothing like those tried-and-true remedies when life throws an ailment your way: plenty of rest; chicken noodle soup; a tonic of meat juice in your rear end. Okay, maybe those first two have survived the ages, but that last … Continue reading →
What could possibly compel you to live alone on a remote island for the better part of three decades? For Charles Hardenberg, it was the very water that is now washing the last traces of him into the Chesapeake Bay. … Continue reading →
I wasn’t sure what I’d find on Mockhorn Island. I knew there was a chance there would be odd artifacts since Mockhorn had once been the secluded retreat of the Cushman family, heirs to a New York bakery fortune, and … Continue reading →
You’d not think to look for traces of John Wilkes Booth in Portsmouth, Virginia. Sure, the city has witnessed its share of extraordinary episodes, but the bustling port town is a long way from Washington D.C. and the quiet, rural … Continue reading →
There were once hundreds of them, just about any spot a country road dead ended at tidewater. They were the lifeblood of communities, a portal to the world beyond. Folks once planned their days, their seasons around them. But now … Continue reading →
It’s easy to appreciate sacrifice at Yorktown Battlefield, where Americans secured their independence. Visitors there find historic fortifications, artillery and cemeteries containing the remains of hundreds of soldiers who fought and died for a cause. But sometimes folks render service … Continue reading →
When photographer Meredith West and I arrived at the train depot in Capeville on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, an unexpected visitor had gotten there ahead of us. Meredith and I were on assignment for another article and made the brief detour … Continue reading →
Every October, tens of thousands of spectators show up in Fayetteville, West Virginia to watch several hundred brave souls leap from the 876-foot-high New River Gorge Bridge. Just as stunning as the parachutists’ courage on Bridge Day, however, is the … Continue reading →
It’s not too often that a bona fide celebrity comes to town, and even rarer that one shows up to kill himself. In 1894, however, Robert Frost—yes, that Robert Frost, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet laureate who penned “The Road Not … Continue reading →
