This week on Roots and Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we head into Smyth County, Virginia, to a quiet stretch of land along the South Fork of the Holston River, an area that doesn’t look like much at first glance, but once held one of the most ambitious industrial communities in this part of Appalachia.

In the mid-1800s, Abijah Thomas built more than just a home here. He built an operation, iron works, a tannery, and Holston Mills, where wool was turned into cloth that would eventually be used for Confederate uniforms during the Civil War. Around it, a small village took shape, complete with homes, a school, a post office, and a store. For a time, it was a place where people lived and worked, all centered around the river.

At the top of it all stood his octagon house, completed in 1858 and built on a scale most homes in this region never reached. Seventeen rooms. Ten bedrooms. Thirty-two windows looking out over everything that made that place function. Built from bricks made on site, the house still stands today as the last physical reminder of what was once there.

But like so many stories in Appalachia, it didn’t last the way it was built to. War, shifting economies, and the loss of the system it depended on slowly unraveled everything Abijah Thomas had created. The mills were eventually sold, moved, and later destroyed by fire in Salem, Virginia. The town that once stood along the river faded out of existence.

Today, only pieces remain.

Part of the old grist mill still stands. A few homes from that time can still be found. And the house, still standing above it all—holds onto more of that story than anything else that’s left.

While visiting the Octagon House, I was able to see—and even touch—fingerprints still entombed in the bricks. Marks left behind by the hands that built it. Historians, including Ben Jackson, have studied these fingerprints in structures like this, raising the question of whether they were left intentionally… a quiet way for people to leave something behind in a time when most of their stories were never recorded.

In this episode, we also talk with the Octagon House Foundation about the work being done to preserve the home, not just as a historic structure, but as a future cultural center where people can come to better understand the full story of the place, including the lives connected to it.

If you’re interested in learning more, visiting, or getting involved, you can find the Octagon House Foundation online at:
👉 https://smythoctagonhouse.org/
Or on Facebook: Octagon House Foundation

Because in Appalachia, some places don’t just disappear…
they leave something behind.

In September of 1996, in the small town of Marion, something happened that this community has never fully moved past.

She was 68 years old. A retired schoolteacher. The kind of woman people didn’t just know, they remembered. For decades, she taught fifth grade in Smyth County. She stayed active in her church. She volunteered. She checked on people. And if you needed something… she was the kind of person who would bring it to your door.

On the night of September 3rd, she was home.

By the next evening, something wasn’t right.

A neighbor went to check on her. The phone wasn’t being answered. The door didn’t feel right. And when police stepped inside that house… they found something that would shake this town to its core.

What followed was an investigation that moved fast. A community that came together. And within days, two local men were arrested, Harold David Davis and Joshua David Widener.

Both of them gave statements.

Both of them told investigators what happened inside that house.

And both of them blamed the other.

The evidence would connect them both to the case. DNA. Items recovered from the scene. Details that matched in ways that couldn’t be ignored.

But even after the arrests… even after the trial… even after the sentences…

the full truth of what happened inside that home that night has never been clearly established.

Who went through the window?

Who made the decisions that led to her death?

And why has that answer never been fully told?

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we go back to Marion, Virginia, into a case where the facts are known, the outcome is final, but the truth still feels incomplete.

Because here in Appalachia, the roots of a place are built on people like her.

And sometimes… the shadows come from the questions that never get answered.

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia, we explore two lost treasure stories rooted deep in the mountains of Appalachia, both tied to real places, real history, and mysteries that have never been fully solved.

The first story takes us into one of the most well-known legends in Appalachian history: the lost silver mine of Jonathan Swift. Said to have been discovered in the mid-1700s, Swift and his men reportedly mined and smelted large amounts of silver somewhere in the mountains, returning multiple times to work the site. He left behind journals filled with directions, references to river forks, mountain gaps, rock houses, and hidden landmarks that people have been trying to follow for over 250 years. While many have searched in Kentucky, some clues suggest the story may belong closer to Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee, where real evidence of silver deposits has been found.

The second story brings us to Saltville, Virginia, during the Civil War, a place where the most valuable resource wasn’t gold, but salt. By 1864, Saltville had become one of the most important industrial sites in the Confederacy, producing massive amounts of salt used to preserve food and sustain the war effort. Because of that, it became a target. Union forces raided the area, battles were fought, and by the end of the year, the salt works were destroyed.

It’s in that moment of uncertainty and chaos that the story of Abraham Smith takes shape.

According to local accounts, Smith buried a large amount of gold, often described as around $60,000, somewhere between Allison’s Gap and Saltville to keep it from being seized. What happened next depends on how the story has been passed down. Some say he never made it back. Others say the location was shared but never recovered. There are even versions that speak of a deathbed confession pointing to the treasure’s location, though no official record has ever confirmed it.

Despite years of searching, no one has ever been able to prove where it was hidden, or if it’s still there at all.

From hidden silver mines to buried Civil War gold, this episode of Roots & Shadows looks at the line between history and folklore, and the stories that continue to live in the mountains long after the truth has been lost.