March 21, 2026 • 29 mins
In this week's Classic episode: Were it not for the coal mine, the town of Vulcan, West Virginia may well have never existed. As a rural and geographically isolated community, Vulcan relied on a single, small bridge for its connection to the larger world. When the bridge failed, the town repeatedly tried to get financial assistance from the local and state government -- with no success. In a state of increasing desperation, the Mayor of Vulcan wrote the Soviet Union for help... during the Cold War. Tune in and learn what happened next.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow Ridiculous Historians. Have you ever been in a situation
where you say, Hey, I've got to ask an unfamiliar
person for a favor.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
H You know I have, and it's awkward, But when
you're desperate, you do what's got to be done. Yes,
this classic episode is about our friends in West Virginia
who once upon a time begged the USSR for foreign
aid at the height of the Cold War.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah, let's go ahead and roll the tape.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, Hi, how
(01:04):
are you? Thank you for tuning into Ridiculous History. Several
of us listening today will be familiar with an area
of the world known as Appalachia, the Appalachians, the Appalachian Mountains, Right,
I've got I've got some past there. And the thing
that's interesting about it is, even if you live in
the US, odds are that you have not been there
(01:28):
because it's quite a rural area. But it's where today's
story takes place. My name's Ben.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
My name is no Ben. Have you did you know
that if you hike certain parts of the Appalachian Trail
you get little rings on your walking stick or there's
some kind of merit badge you're supposed to get where
you can show unequivocally that you have hiked the entire
Appalachian Trail. I have exactly zero of those.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I also well have hiked parts of the trail. I
have not hiked the entire thing. It's a heck of
a commitment, but it's a no thing to do. Almost
as noble as being the producer on shows like Ridiculous History,
which reminds me we should shout out our super producer,
Casey Pegrip. So nol, you have never hiked the trail,
(02:15):
but you've been to the Appalachians yet I.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Have, and I have been on parts of the trail.
That's where I found out about the medallion system, where
it's these little kind of curved metal pieces that indicate
which parts of the trail you successfully completed. And if
you're like a real ball or a real Appalachian trailhead,
you have a stick that's just like you know, covered
in these things.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Right right, just lousy with them. One of the most
interesting things about exploring this area of the world is
that you'll run into places where time seems to have
slowed down or things go at their own relatively isolated pace.
And in today's episode, we're going to explore a tiny
(02:58):
community that is, in its own way, very isolated. It's
called Vulcan in the western edge of West Virginia.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
That's about as west as it gets, my friend, right, Okay,
that's that's actually not entirely true, but it's as west
as it gets in West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Right, it's a Virginia wise, this is the westest Vulcan.
West Virginia is an interesting case. It's located along the
Tug Fork, which is, you know, part of the Tug River,
and this is often called one of the US's most
storied waterways. Vulcan is named after, you know, spoiler alert,
(03:38):
the god of fire and Roman mythology, Vulcan, and this
is something we had talked about off air. Vulcan makes
an appearance in a fantastic novel and set of TV
adaptations called American Gods by Neil Gayman. You saw that, right.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I did a season two out yet been either.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Or it's about to come out. Yeah, I'm excited. That's
one of those shows where I don't know about everybody else,
but I made the decision a while back that if
I really enjoy a show I want to wait until
the entire season is out before watching it because Netflix
ruined me. Man. I just I can't watch something and
wait for a week and hope it shows up next week.
(04:19):
It just it triggers all kinds of you know, abandonment
issues and patients.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
You know, I'll tell you, I actually kind of I
like it in a different way. I like being able
to binge, but I also like the old school cliffhanger
having to wait a week mentality of traditional television release.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I'll do that with maybe Game of Thrones.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Game of Thrones did it with True Detective, you know,
the ones that are real edge of your seaters.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I halfway did it with True Detective season three. Watched
the first four episodes and I said, I'll wait.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Then you took a couple of weeks off, and then
you had some little bingeable episodes for you.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yep. In the case of Vulcan, West Virginia, we find
a town that is very much isolated by geography more
so than say culture. Right, Can we talk a little
bit about where Vulcan is? We said, it's in this
very southwestern corner of West Virginia. But what's it around?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Well, it's I mean, it's kind of its own weird
little island in some ways in that there's no connection
to the surrounding areas except through a little footbridge. The
Norfolk and Western Railway runs through the middle of the town,
and that separates the two sides of the town from
(05:38):
one being located on the river bank. And then there
are ones that are up more inland on a hill
that is very near to a cemetery called Vulcan Hill.
And here's the thing. I mean, even to get out
of the city, out of this little hamlet, you would
have to sometimes cross underneath parked railway cars. Kids school
(06:03):
kids had to catch the bus on the Kentucky side
in order to get there. They had to go to
some pretty perilous ends to catch the bus, and some
kids have even been injured. And I believe there was
the case of a child losing a leg in such
a situation.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely true. So we're looking at mountains, rivers,
terrain that is very difficult to traverse, so much so
that had coal not been discovered in the general vicinity here,
you could make a fairly strong argument that no one
(06:39):
would be living there at all. You know, maybe some
guy decades and decades ago would have hit a moonshine
still out there, but even that would be pretty arduous.
It'd still be a lot of work to get there. However,
when coal was discovered in this area the very beginning
of the twentieth century, a mining camp was constructed, and
(07:03):
this would later grow into what we recognize as Vulcan
West Virginia. But the thing is, when the mining camp
was first constructed, when coal was first discovered there, the
miners who lived in the area had to row across
the river every day just to go to work.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
That's right. And it wasn't until that mining company created
this very narrow wooden foot bridge that folks could actually
get in and out of town without having to get wet.
So the thing I was talking about with the kids
and the railway cars, that was a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, yeah, that was a little bit later, but it's
an excellent example of the importance of this bridge and
the problems with this bridge. Picture this. If we're going
to do a rod Serling intro picture this town. There's
one way in, there's one way out, and that's when
the bridge is. It drives straight into the Vulcan zone.
(08:04):
So the I'm freestyling here. So over the years, the
people who lived in this community, realizing the key nature
of this bridge, they took great care to maintain it.
And when automobiles arrived, when they became a thing in
this part of the world, the people of Vulcan took
(08:27):
upon themselves to expand this bridge so that they could
drive these vehicles across. However, to your point, Noel, when
we say expanding, we mean that they just barely made
it big enough for one car to drive across.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, and this was diy ingenuity at its finest, because
they didn't have somebody swooping in to help them with infrastructure.
It was literally an effort of the townspeople to solve
a problem they needed solved and to cross that bridge,
a swinging foot bridge on a car. Good Lord, that
sounds like the was terrifying experience ever of all time. No, no,
thank you, sir or madam.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
The way that The New York Times described this bridge
in an article on December sixteenth, nineteen seventy eight, by
an author named Gregory James, was that there was no
more than a quote thumb length margin for error on
either side have you ever driven around in the mountain snow?
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, with the crazy switchbacks and like where you're right
off the edge of the cliff. You were so close,
especially when you can't see what's in front of you,
and you were just trusting that around that turn, you're
not just going to plummet to your death.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Oh and you know what this makes me remember when
we did an epic road rally car trip. Casey you
were there, and Noel you were there, and I was
there as well as my good friend Scott Benjamin. We
had to drive through parts of West Virginia that were
exactly like this, switchbacks and all.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, that's where that's where my main memories of it
come from. Is that very sketchy leg of that trip.
And Scott. I don't know if you know this about Scott, folks,
but he is a bit of a speed demon.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
He's got a lead foot.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, he was not. He was taking those curbs like
Steve McQueen and leaving us kind of clutch at least
me personally clutching my pearls.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
That's that's why I pressured him to switch switch to
the wheel and ride shotgun for a while and let
me drive. But if you've ever been not just in
the Appalachian area, but if you've ever been in a
mountainous area in general in the car, you know what
we're talking about. These very narrow roads and lanes that
hug the side of the incline with maybe maybe some
(10:42):
wooden railing, maybe nothing, And it can be very disconcerting
if you're a person who doesn't drive there every day,
because people who drive there every day this is a
normal experience to them, so they think that they'll think
that you are driving like, you know, like an elderly person,
right whereas we'll think they're driving like lunatics. This is
(11:06):
one of those bridges, but it's not just in a
mountainous area. It's over water, there's not much margin for error.
And then throughout the decades, right they're taking care of
this bridge. It's a key artery of the town. But
as we know, as recent history is shown, coal mining
doesn't last forever. Toward the nineteen sixties or so, the
(11:32):
coal resources begin to dry up and the town feels
like it's entering an economic decline. It feels like there's trouble,
but they still have the bridge, at least that is
until July nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, that's when, you know, despite their best efforts to
keep it up. I mean, they're not professional bridge caretakers,
and you know, understandably they've got work to do down
in those other dangerous part of town, being the mines.
So the bridge collapses, it crumbles, and it leaves them
pretty much for all intents and purposes in an automobile
based society at this point, cut off from the outside world. Yeah,
(12:08):
and in desperate need of some assistance.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So even though things had never been particularly opulent in
the town of Vulcan, West Virginia, now things seemed increasingly desperate.
One person in the town described it as living at
the tail end of nothing. They knew that this situation
was unsustainable. The town depended upon this bridge. Around the
(12:33):
time of the bridge collapse, a woman named Nelly Holly
had ordered a living room suitep from upstate further up
in West Virginia, and the truck arrived with the furniture,
but the driver refused to bring the goods to the
Holly household because the driver learned that the only road
(12:54):
into Vulcan was this How is it described a ribbon
of gravel and it was an even public property, right.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
No, it belonged to the railway. It was more of
a more or less an access road, not intended for
this kind of use, and kind of in a similar
situation we were talking about, and that it was very narrow,
very dangerous, and you'd be putting yourself at risk, and
especially since it would technically be trespassing on private property.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And so now we introduce you to a fascinating character,
one John Robinette, who had lived in the area for
his entire life. He worked as a notary public, a
car mechanic, a carnival barker. That's something that happens in
a lot of small towns. There will be people who
have multiple different types of occupation depending upon the service
(13:50):
needed at any given day. You know. So the person
who runs the grocery store might also be the person
who hosts the annual harvest festival or something. Right, the
person who's the dentist might also be the youth pastor.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah, sort of the way that football coaches don't often
teach history in high school.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Right, oddly, or social studies. Also, sure, that's the other one.
So this guy, John Robinette, he is so sad that
Miss Holly is not getting her living room sweet. It
moves him on an emotional level, and he says, so
I up and appointed myself mayor and set out to
(14:28):
get us a bridge. Because the bridge had obviously collapsed.
Miss Holly was seventy four years old, she had to
hire herself a boy to go fetch a few sticks
of furniture and haul it on back against the law
on railroad property private property. And so he made it
his mission as self appointed mayor to prosecute for the
(14:52):
construction of this new bridge and talk to regional politicians,
area politicians. He eventually gets as far as speaking to
the office of former Governor Arch Moore. However, it's a
close but no cigar situation, a close but no bridge situation, and.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Just for a little bit of contact. This article from
the New York Times that you can find online is
from nineteen seventy eight, so this is a very contemporary
account of this problem. So what happens is Phyllis Blankenship,
who ran the sixteen post office Box post office in Vulcan,
recounts the story like this. He the person who appointed
(15:33):
himself mayor, mister Robinette, got on the phone got on
the horn with the governor and demanded a bridge be builds,
demanded satisfaction and close but no cigar. So you know
what's the obvious next step. He's been turned down by
the government of his own city, abandoned, left in the cold.
(15:57):
You know, they're doing this this town based around the
very dangerous occupation contributing to the economy of the state.
And the governor says, no, thank you. You are forgotten.
You are marooned and forgotten. So mister Robinette comes up
with what I would say is one of the most
brilliant uses of like pr blackmail.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Almost yeah, yeah, So it's nineteen seventy six. They've just
been stonewalled every time, every time they ask for a
little bit of help. Again, the bridge that collapsed was
the only legal way in and out of the town.
People were having to drive illegally on this flimsy ribbon
(16:42):
of gravel that the train company owned. They every time
they asked, they were told there was no money. There's
no money available to spend on the bridge, according to
reports from the West Virginia Gazette. So this is what
Robinette does. Mayor Robinette rights to not the local paper
he's already done that, not the New York Times, any
(17:04):
paper of note. Instead, he writes directly to the USSR,
the Soviet Union, and he says, Hi, I'm the mayor
of Vulcan, West Virginia, a small town here in the
United States, and we are our town is going to
die if we don't get this bridge. The state is
not going to fund us. And in my opinion, dear Russians,
(17:28):
I don't think Uncle Sam cares one wit about us.
He sends this letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC,
and at first, you know, at first it's like, well,
is this joke? Is this just a prank, a little
bit of trolling? And the Soviet government doesn't immediately answer
(17:49):
until that is Robinette is contacted directly by a journalist
named Iona Andronov, a Soviet reporter who won to hear
this story in person.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
So in December of nineteen seventy seven, this reporter Andronov
touches down in Vulcan and starts making the rounds, getting
the scoop, pounding the pavement or the gravel, I guess,
and asking questions of the residents and broadcasting it to
the rest of the world right right.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
So Endrov works for a publication in Moscow called Litterata
Naval Gazeta, and this is solid gold, platinum level ammunition
for the propaganda war that's going on between the USSR
and the US. The problem is from Uncle Sam's side
(18:46):
that US papers also know a good headline when they
see it, and the US based publications pick it up
as well, so in a way they are disseminating Russian
propaganda for the USSR. The Spokane and Daily Chronicle rites
about this in seventy seven with the following quote Soviet officials. Well,
(19:06):
I'm used today by reports that the small town of
Olk in West Virginia has appealed to the Kremlin for
four and eight. The town, with a population of two hundred,
asked the Soviet government for financial help to build a
bridge after the town was turned down by the US
and West Virginia governments.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
It's crazy that newsmen still talked like that in the
late seventies.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Especially since it was a printed paper and not a
radio announcement.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Well, you know, sometimes they have to dictate, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
So this is this is also during the not the
height of the Red Scare, Communist panic but this is
still a time and place where people would accuse you
of being a communist as an insult or ask you
if you were a card carrying communists. Someone did ask
Endanov and he said, yes, actually.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yeah, that's sort of our thing. Yeah. It got so
far as to for there being rumors circulating in the
community that there would be bomb attacks on any bridge
that was built with communist cash. So you know, it
really created a hubbub, and that those headlines really were disseminated.
(20:08):
Because this is quite a juicy story. So of course,
all of a sudden, the good old us of a as
we don't like we don't like to be made fun of,
we don't like to be made to seem cheap, even
though we kind of are a lot of the time
acquiesced and was like, okay, okay, we can do this.
We can we can muster the money that we need.
(20:28):
Now that you've put our nose to the fire, we'll
give you one point three million and we'll get you
your little bridge. Because here's the thing, though, it like
it was really not. The families that stayed behind after
the coal industry crumbled were kind of these holdouts. They
didn't have anywhere else to go. They couldn't afford to
move perhaps, and they you know, this was their home.
(20:49):
And it was only like in the dozens of families
that lived in this very small area.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Right, it was less than it was less than one
hundred families, maybe maybe fifty families. But this is okay. This,
this is where the story divides. This is where there
are two different versions of the story, two different narratives
that persist in the modern day. So yes, the West
Virginian government does agree to build this bridge, or at
(21:18):
least provide the funds to build a bridge, but they
do it like within hours after Andronov actually gets into Vulcan.
They do it so quickly. So let's kick through two
different versions of this story. As The New York Times
puts it, whether by coincidence or design, the state of
(21:38):
West Virginia announced on the same day of Andronov's visit
that Vulcan would get this bridge they like the same
day he was there, he announced.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I wonder if that was because of some intelligence gathering.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Maybe yes, So the papers have been the US papers
and the Moscow papers were aware of this too, and
that means certainly the intelligence apparatus was also cognizant. But
from the official US government perspective, the explanation of this.
(22:14):
West Virginia's explanation is that they just they were just
in the approval process for months and months. It just
takes a long time to approve that much money and
the West Virginian government. But to the people of Vulcan,
and if we're being honest, to most of the people
reading this story from the outside, it seemed like they
(22:37):
only reacted this way because it was an international embarrassment
because Mayor John Robinette had just brought a Russian person
down there and he said Also Robinette, for his part,
said he doesn't he doesn't care where the money comes from. No,
he just wants the bridge built.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
He just wants Miss Holly to get her living room
suite with some dignity.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
It really tied the room together. It was really important
for her to have that living room suite. But here's
the thing. I mean it it just goes to show
how sometimes a little weaponized pr move is exactly what
it takes to get those in power to act. It's
never doing the right thing, or often not, it's much
(23:23):
more about holding their feet of the fire and making
them fear the potential of looking.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Foolish, right, and in this case it worked. Two years later,
two years after this hubbub and Bujaha, on July fourth,
nineteen eighty, the bridge opened. It cost a little over
one million dollars, and the price was ultimately split between
the governments of West Virginia and Kentucky. The residents of
(23:51):
Vulcans celebrated the opening of what they called the bridge
the Russians almost built, with an American flag waving in
the breeze and a cartoonishly large amount of illegally imported vodka.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Now here's the PostScript of the story, or at least
the fictionalized PostScript, the part where the US government, in
a blatant act of revenge, poisons all the remaining inhabitants,
you know, in their sleep. Because you don't mess with
you know, you mess with the bull, you get the horns. Yeah.
I don't know, that's not true. But I would be pissed.
(24:27):
Wouldn't you be pissed if you were Uncle Sam.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It depends on the different levels, you know, on a
federal level, I probably would be more irritated with the
with the state government, like were I president at the time,
I wouldn't be irritated with the residents of vulcan I
wouldn't even be that irritated with the Soviets. I'd be
irritated with the governor of West Virginia. That's a good point,
(24:53):
you know what I mean, Maybe he got.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
A talking to.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
It rolls downhill, my friend, it really does. So this
this is fascinating, and this stunt was successful. We have
to wonder whether something like this could be replicated somewhere
else in the world, and we're working with our research associate,
Christopher Hasiotis. One thing we found was that there are
(25:17):
plenty of other examples of foreign aid being given to
the US or other countries attempting to give foreign aid
to the US, like famously, the Massi in Kenya after
the tragedy of nine to eleven on September eleventh, two
thousand and one, the attack on the World Trade Center,
(25:37):
the Massill donated cattle to the US. Did you do
you remember this story?
Speaker 3 (25:42):
I do not.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, Y's heartwarmings. So the Massill live in a relatively
rural area of Kenya, but when they learned what happened
in New York on September eleventh. They were they were
so horrified and sad. They felt like they needed to
(26:03):
do something. So they blessed fourteen cows in a pretty
solemn ceremony and then gave these cows to the Deputy
Chief of Mission at the US Embassy and Nairobi, a
guy named William Brankick, and they said, here, please bring
these to the people of New York and let them know,
you know that they are in our thoughts. And I
(26:26):
thought that was hard warming, because that's not propaganda at all.
That's just being very human, you know what I mean.
So I want to I'm bringing that example up because
I do want to point out that not every foreign
act of charity is a propaganda move. The Russian one was, though,
totally the record. That was one.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah, And now you can, I think, still visit this
area through that very bridge that was constructed, the bridge
that the Russians almost built, which is now a single small,
two lane road bridge over the Tug which is just
a single lane tunnel bridge that is covered in graffiti,
(27:05):
which I love that in and it's almost like its
own little mini Berlin wall.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
And this is where our story ends today. However, never
fear it's not the end of our show. We will
be back with more strange dare we say, ridiculous tales
of people, places, and events throughout this the weird experiment
that we call human civilization. In the meantime, we want
to hear from you, folks. Do you have any stories
(27:32):
from it? I in particular will be personally fascinated by
any stories of the Appalachian Mountains. But regardless of where
you live in the world, do you have any stories
like this, any very isolated towns that had to use
unorthodox means to for survival?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, any bridge related stories? And hey, if you're a
New Yorker, are you a bridge or a tunnel person?
What do you prefer? Let us nice? It really is.
Cab drivers are often after that, and I'm like, I
don't know which everyone's best.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I think part of it is, you know, the cab
drivers will present it in terms of what's better given
traffic patterns. But a lot of people do have crippling
fears of either going on bridges, like my mother hates bridges,
or they have a fear of going into the ground,
you know. So it's really is a polite way to
(28:24):
ask which terrifies you least.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
That's a really interesting way of looking at it, and
I never thought of that, So let us know which
terrifies you most or least. You can write to us
at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can check out
our social media presencies at Facebook where you can join
our group called the Ridiculous Historians, which we find to
be a lot of.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Fun, and you can follow us both personally. We have
our very own instagrams nol you've got one, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
At Embryonic Insider and.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
I'm at ben Boland Thinks as always to our super producer,
Casey Pegram thanks to we're research associate. Friend of the show,
Christopher hasiotis who we're overdue to have a guest appearance.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
We really are.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
He's always the best.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
In fact sometimes on the One thing you have to
do to join Ridiculous Stories on Facebook is say who
name one of us as the host and occasionally some
whole named Christopher, which I appreciate because he appears so infrequently,
his appearances must really make an impact.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
I love all the guests that we have on our show,
and you know, it gets weird, but always weird in
a good Way. Thanks also to Alex Williams who composed
our track, to our research associate Gabe and Noel. Thanks
to the people of West Virginia.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Really, they are resilient people and they know how to
get stuff done. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow Ridiculous Historians. Have you ever been in a situation
where you say, Hey, I've got to ask an unfamiliar
person for a favor.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
H You know I have, and it's awkward, But when
you're desperate, you do what's got to be done. Yes,
this classic episode is about our friends in West Virginia
who once upon a time begged the USSR for foreign
aid at the height of the Cold War.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah, let's go ahead and roll the tape.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, Hi, how
(01:04):
are you? Thank you for tuning into Ridiculous History. Several
of us listening today will be familiar with an area
of the world known as Appalachia, the Appalachians, the Appalachian Mountains, Right,
I've got I've got some past there. And the thing
that's interesting about it is, even if you live in
the US, odds are that you have not been there
(01:28):
because it's quite a rural area. But it's where today's
story takes place. My name's Ben.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
My name is no Ben. Have you did you know
that if you hike certain parts of the Appalachian Trail
you get little rings on your walking stick or there's
some kind of merit badge you're supposed to get where
you can show unequivocally that you have hiked the entire
Appalachian Trail. I have exactly zero of those.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I also well have hiked parts of the trail. I
have not hiked the entire thing. It's a heck of
a commitment, but it's a no thing to do. Almost
as noble as being the producer on shows like Ridiculous History,
which reminds me we should shout out our super producer,
Casey Pegrip. So nol, you have never hiked the trail,
(02:15):
but you've been to the Appalachians yet I.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Have, and I have been on parts of the trail.
That's where I found out about the medallion system, where
it's these little kind of curved metal pieces that indicate
which parts of the trail you successfully completed. And if
you're like a real ball or a real Appalachian trailhead,
you have a stick that's just like you know, covered
in these things.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Right right, just lousy with them. One of the most
interesting things about exploring this area of the world is
that you'll run into places where time seems to have
slowed down or things go at their own relatively isolated pace.
And in today's episode, we're going to explore a tiny
(02:58):
community that is, in its own way, very isolated. It's
called Vulcan in the western edge of West Virginia.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
That's about as west as it gets, my friend, right, Okay,
that's that's actually not entirely true, but it's as west
as it gets in West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Right, it's a Virginia wise, this is the westest Vulcan.
West Virginia is an interesting case. It's located along the
Tug Fork, which is, you know, part of the Tug River,
and this is often called one of the US's most
storied waterways. Vulcan is named after, you know, spoiler alert,
(03:38):
the god of fire and Roman mythology, Vulcan, and this
is something we had talked about off air. Vulcan makes
an appearance in a fantastic novel and set of TV
adaptations called American Gods by Neil Gayman. You saw that, right.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I did a season two out yet been either.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Or it's about to come out. Yeah, I'm excited. That's
one of those shows where I don't know about everybody else,
but I made the decision a while back that if
I really enjoy a show I want to wait until
the entire season is out before watching it because Netflix
ruined me. Man. I just I can't watch something and
wait for a week and hope it shows up next week.
(04:19):
It just it triggers all kinds of you know, abandonment
issues and patients.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
You know, I'll tell you, I actually kind of I
like it in a different way. I like being able
to binge, but I also like the old school cliffhanger
having to wait a week mentality of traditional television release.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I'll do that with maybe Game of Thrones.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Game of Thrones did it with True Detective, you know,
the ones that are real edge of your seaters.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I halfway did it with True Detective season three. Watched
the first four episodes and I said, I'll wait.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Then you took a couple of weeks off, and then
you had some little bingeable episodes for you.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yep. In the case of Vulcan, West Virginia, we find
a town that is very much isolated by geography more
so than say culture. Right, Can we talk a little
bit about where Vulcan is? We said, it's in this
very southwestern corner of West Virginia. But what's it around?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Well, it's I mean, it's kind of its own weird
little island in some ways in that there's no connection
to the surrounding areas except through a little footbridge. The
Norfolk and Western Railway runs through the middle of the town,
and that separates the two sides of the town from
(05:38):
one being located on the river bank. And then there
are ones that are up more inland on a hill
that is very near to a cemetery called Vulcan Hill.
And here's the thing. I mean, even to get out
of the city, out of this little hamlet, you would
have to sometimes cross underneath parked railway cars. Kids school
(06:03):
kids had to catch the bus on the Kentucky side
in order to get there. They had to go to
some pretty perilous ends to catch the bus, and some
kids have even been injured. And I believe there was
the case of a child losing a leg in such
a situation.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely true. So we're looking at mountains, rivers,
terrain that is very difficult to traverse, so much so
that had coal not been discovered in the general vicinity here,
you could make a fairly strong argument that no one
(06:39):
would be living there at all. You know, maybe some
guy decades and decades ago would have hit a moonshine
still out there, but even that would be pretty arduous.
It'd still be a lot of work to get there. However,
when coal was discovered in this area the very beginning
of the twentieth century, a mining camp was constructed, and
(07:03):
this would later grow into what we recognize as Vulcan
West Virginia. But the thing is, when the mining camp
was first constructed, when coal was first discovered there, the
miners who lived in the area had to row across
the river every day just to go to work.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
That's right. And it wasn't until that mining company created
this very narrow wooden foot bridge that folks could actually
get in and out of town without having to get wet.
So the thing I was talking about with the kids
and the railway cars, that was a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, yeah, that was a little bit later, but it's
an excellent example of the importance of this bridge and
the problems with this bridge. Picture this. If we're going
to do a rod Serling intro picture this town. There's
one way in, there's one way out, and that's when
the bridge is. It drives straight into the Vulcan zone.
(08:04):
So the I'm freestyling here. So over the years, the
people who lived in this community, realizing the key nature
of this bridge, they took great care to maintain it.
And when automobiles arrived, when they became a thing in
this part of the world, the people of Vulcan took
(08:27):
upon themselves to expand this bridge so that they could
drive these vehicles across. However, to your point, Noel, when
we say expanding, we mean that they just barely made
it big enough for one car to drive across.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, and this was diy ingenuity at its finest, because
they didn't have somebody swooping in to help them with infrastructure.
It was literally an effort of the townspeople to solve
a problem they needed solved and to cross that bridge,
a swinging foot bridge on a car. Good Lord, that
sounds like the was terrifying experience ever of all time. No, no,
thank you, sir or madam.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
The way that The New York Times described this bridge
in an article on December sixteenth, nineteen seventy eight, by
an author named Gregory James, was that there was no
more than a quote thumb length margin for error on
either side have you ever driven around in the mountain snow?
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, with the crazy switchbacks and like where you're right
off the edge of the cliff. You were so close,
especially when you can't see what's in front of you,
and you were just trusting that around that turn, you're
not just going to plummet to your death.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Oh and you know what this makes me remember when
we did an epic road rally car trip. Casey you
were there, and Noel you were there, and I was
there as well as my good friend Scott Benjamin. We
had to drive through parts of West Virginia that were
exactly like this, switchbacks and all.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, that's where that's where my main memories of it
come from. Is that very sketchy leg of that trip.
And Scott. I don't know if you know this about Scott, folks,
but he is a bit of a speed demon.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
He's got a lead foot.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, he was not. He was taking those curbs like
Steve McQueen and leaving us kind of clutch at least
me personally clutching my pearls.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
That's that's why I pressured him to switch switch to
the wheel and ride shotgun for a while and let
me drive. But if you've ever been not just in
the Appalachian area, but if you've ever been in a
mountainous area in general in the car, you know what
we're talking about. These very narrow roads and lanes that
hug the side of the incline with maybe maybe some
(10:42):
wooden railing, maybe nothing, And it can be very disconcerting
if you're a person who doesn't drive there every day,
because people who drive there every day this is a
normal experience to them, so they think that they'll think
that you are driving like, you know, like an elderly person,
right whereas we'll think they're driving like lunatics. This is
(11:06):
one of those bridges, but it's not just in a
mountainous area. It's over water, there's not much margin for error.
And then throughout the decades, right they're taking care of
this bridge. It's a key artery of the town. But
as we know, as recent history is shown, coal mining
doesn't last forever. Toward the nineteen sixties or so, the
(11:32):
coal resources begin to dry up and the town feels
like it's entering an economic decline. It feels like there's trouble,
but they still have the bridge, at least that is
until July nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, that's when, you know, despite their best efforts to
keep it up. I mean, they're not professional bridge caretakers,
and you know, understandably they've got work to do down
in those other dangerous part of town, being the mines.
So the bridge collapses, it crumbles, and it leaves them
pretty much for all intents and purposes in an automobile
based society at this point, cut off from the outside world. Yeah,
(12:08):
and in desperate need of some assistance.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So even though things had never been particularly opulent in
the town of Vulcan, West Virginia, now things seemed increasingly desperate.
One person in the town described it as living at
the tail end of nothing. They knew that this situation
was unsustainable. The town depended upon this bridge. Around the
(12:33):
time of the bridge collapse, a woman named Nelly Holly
had ordered a living room suitep from upstate further up
in West Virginia, and the truck arrived with the furniture,
but the driver refused to bring the goods to the
Holly household because the driver learned that the only road
(12:54):
into Vulcan was this How is it described a ribbon
of gravel and it was an even public property, right.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
No, it belonged to the railway. It was more of
a more or less an access road, not intended for
this kind of use, and kind of in a similar
situation we were talking about, and that it was very narrow,
very dangerous, and you'd be putting yourself at risk, and
especially since it would technically be trespassing on private property.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And so now we introduce you to a fascinating character,
one John Robinette, who had lived in the area for
his entire life. He worked as a notary public, a
car mechanic, a carnival barker. That's something that happens in
a lot of small towns. There will be people who
have multiple different types of occupation depending upon the service
(13:50):
needed at any given day. You know. So the person
who runs the grocery store might also be the person
who hosts the annual harvest festival or something. Right, the
person who's the dentist might also be the youth pastor.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah, sort of the way that football coaches don't often
teach history in high school.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Right, oddly, or social studies. Also, sure, that's the other one.
So this guy, John Robinette, he is so sad that
Miss Holly is not getting her living room sweet. It
moves him on an emotional level, and he says, so
I up and appointed myself mayor and set out to
(14:28):
get us a bridge. Because the bridge had obviously collapsed.
Miss Holly was seventy four years old, she had to
hire herself a boy to go fetch a few sticks
of furniture and haul it on back against the law
on railroad property private property. And so he made it
his mission as self appointed mayor to prosecute for the
(14:52):
construction of this new bridge and talk to regional politicians,
area politicians. He eventually gets as far as speaking to
the office of former Governor Arch Moore. However, it's a
close but no cigar situation, a close but no bridge situation, and.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Just for a little bit of contact. This article from
the New York Times that you can find online is
from nineteen seventy eight, so this is a very contemporary
account of this problem. So what happens is Phyllis Blankenship,
who ran the sixteen post office Box post office in Vulcan,
recounts the story like this. He the person who appointed
(15:33):
himself mayor, mister Robinette, got on the phone got on
the horn with the governor and demanded a bridge be builds,
demanded satisfaction and close but no cigar. So you know
what's the obvious next step. He's been turned down by
the government of his own city, abandoned, left in the cold.
(15:57):
You know, they're doing this this town based around the
very dangerous occupation contributing to the economy of the state.
And the governor says, no, thank you. You are forgotten.
You are marooned and forgotten. So mister Robinette comes up
with what I would say is one of the most
brilliant uses of like pr blackmail.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Almost yeah, yeah, So it's nineteen seventy six. They've just
been stonewalled every time, every time they ask for a
little bit of help. Again, the bridge that collapsed was
the only legal way in and out of the town.
People were having to drive illegally on this flimsy ribbon
(16:42):
of gravel that the train company owned. They every time
they asked, they were told there was no money. There's
no money available to spend on the bridge, according to
reports from the West Virginia Gazette. So this is what
Robinette does. Mayor Robinette rights to not the local paper
he's already done that, not the New York Times, any
(17:04):
paper of note. Instead, he writes directly to the USSR,
the Soviet Union, and he says, Hi, I'm the mayor
of Vulcan, West Virginia, a small town here in the
United States, and we are our town is going to
die if we don't get this bridge. The state is
not going to fund us. And in my opinion, dear Russians,
(17:28):
I don't think Uncle Sam cares one wit about us.
He sends this letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC,
and at first, you know, at first it's like, well,
is this joke? Is this just a prank, a little
bit of trolling? And the Soviet government doesn't immediately answer
(17:49):
until that is Robinette is contacted directly by a journalist
named Iona Andronov, a Soviet reporter who won to hear
this story in person.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
So in December of nineteen seventy seven, this reporter Andronov
touches down in Vulcan and starts making the rounds, getting
the scoop, pounding the pavement or the gravel, I guess,
and asking questions of the residents and broadcasting it to
the rest of the world right right.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
So Endrov works for a publication in Moscow called Litterata
Naval Gazeta, and this is solid gold, platinum level ammunition
for the propaganda war that's going on between the USSR
and the US. The problem is from Uncle Sam's side
(18:46):
that US papers also know a good headline when they
see it, and the US based publications pick it up
as well, so in a way they are disseminating Russian
propaganda for the USSR. The Spokane and Daily Chronicle rites
about this in seventy seven with the following quote Soviet officials. Well,
(19:06):
I'm used today by reports that the small town of
Olk in West Virginia has appealed to the Kremlin for
four and eight. The town, with a population of two hundred,
asked the Soviet government for financial help to build a
bridge after the town was turned down by the US
and West Virginia governments.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
It's crazy that newsmen still talked like that in the
late seventies.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Especially since it was a printed paper and not a
radio announcement.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Well, you know, sometimes they have to dictate, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
So this is this is also during the not the
height of the Red Scare, Communist panic but this is
still a time and place where people would accuse you
of being a communist as an insult or ask you
if you were a card carrying communists. Someone did ask
Endanov and he said, yes, actually.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yeah, that's sort of our thing. Yeah. It got so
far as to for there being rumors circulating in the
community that there would be bomb attacks on any bridge
that was built with communist cash. So you know, it
really created a hubbub, and that those headlines really were disseminated.
(20:08):
Because this is quite a juicy story. So of course,
all of a sudden, the good old us of a as
we don't like we don't like to be made fun of,
we don't like to be made to seem cheap, even
though we kind of are a lot of the time
acquiesced and was like, okay, okay, we can do this.
We can we can muster the money that we need.
(20:28):
Now that you've put our nose to the fire, we'll
give you one point three million and we'll get you
your little bridge. Because here's the thing, though, it like
it was really not. The families that stayed behind after
the coal industry crumbled were kind of these holdouts. They
didn't have anywhere else to go. They couldn't afford to
move perhaps, and they you know, this was their home.
(20:49):
And it was only like in the dozens of families
that lived in this very small area.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Right, it was less than it was less than one
hundred families, maybe maybe fifty families. But this is okay. This,
this is where the story divides. This is where there
are two different versions of the story, two different narratives
that persist in the modern day. So yes, the West
Virginian government does agree to build this bridge, or at
(21:18):
least provide the funds to build a bridge, but they
do it like within hours after Andronov actually gets into Vulcan.
They do it so quickly. So let's kick through two
different versions of this story. As The New York Times
puts it, whether by coincidence or design, the state of
(21:38):
West Virginia announced on the same day of Andronov's visit
that Vulcan would get this bridge they like the same
day he was there, he announced.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I wonder if that was because of some intelligence gathering.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Maybe yes, So the papers have been the US papers
and the Moscow papers were aware of this too, and
that means certainly the intelligence apparatus was also cognizant. But
from the official US government perspective, the explanation of this.
(22:14):
West Virginia's explanation is that they just they were just
in the approval process for months and months. It just
takes a long time to approve that much money and
the West Virginian government. But to the people of Vulcan,
and if we're being honest, to most of the people
reading this story from the outside, it seemed like they
(22:37):
only reacted this way because it was an international embarrassment
because Mayor John Robinette had just brought a Russian person
down there and he said Also Robinette, for his part,
said he doesn't he doesn't care where the money comes from. No,
he just wants the bridge built.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
He just wants Miss Holly to get her living room
suite with some dignity.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
It really tied the room together. It was really important
for her to have that living room suite. But here's
the thing. I mean it it just goes to show
how sometimes a little weaponized pr move is exactly what
it takes to get those in power to act. It's
never doing the right thing, or often not, it's much
(23:23):
more about holding their feet of the fire and making
them fear the potential of looking.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Foolish, right, and in this case it worked. Two years later,
two years after this hubbub and Bujaha, on July fourth,
nineteen eighty, the bridge opened. It cost a little over
one million dollars, and the price was ultimately split between
the governments of West Virginia and Kentucky. The residents of
(23:51):
Vulcans celebrated the opening of what they called the bridge
the Russians almost built, with an American flag waving in
the breeze and a cartoonishly large amount of illegally imported vodka.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Now here's the PostScript of the story, or at least
the fictionalized PostScript, the part where the US government, in
a blatant act of revenge, poisons all the remaining inhabitants,
you know, in their sleep. Because you don't mess with
you know, you mess with the bull, you get the horns. Yeah.
I don't know, that's not true. But I would be pissed.
(24:27):
Wouldn't you be pissed if you were Uncle Sam.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It depends on the different levels, you know, on a
federal level, I probably would be more irritated with the
with the state government, like were I president at the time,
I wouldn't be irritated with the residents of vulcan I
wouldn't even be that irritated with the Soviets. I'd be
irritated with the governor of West Virginia. That's a good point,
(24:53):
you know what I mean, Maybe he got.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
A talking to.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
It rolls downhill, my friend, it really does. So this
this is fascinating, and this stunt was successful. We have
to wonder whether something like this could be replicated somewhere
else in the world, and we're working with our research associate,
Christopher Hasiotis. One thing we found was that there are
(25:17):
plenty of other examples of foreign aid being given to
the US or other countries attempting to give foreign aid
to the US, like famously, the Massi in Kenya after
the tragedy of nine to eleven on September eleventh, two
thousand and one, the attack on the World Trade Center,
(25:37):
the Massill donated cattle to the US. Did you do
you remember this story?
Speaker 3 (25:42):
I do not.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, Y's heartwarmings. So the Massill live in a relatively
rural area of Kenya, but when they learned what happened
in New York on September eleventh. They were they were
so horrified and sad. They felt like they needed to
(26:03):
do something. So they blessed fourteen cows in a pretty
solemn ceremony and then gave these cows to the Deputy
Chief of Mission at the US Embassy and Nairobi, a
guy named William Brankick, and they said, here, please bring
these to the people of New York and let them know,
you know that they are in our thoughts. And I
(26:26):
thought that was hard warming, because that's not propaganda at all.
That's just being very human, you know what I mean.
So I want to I'm bringing that example up because
I do want to point out that not every foreign
act of charity is a propaganda move. The Russian one was, though,
totally the record. That was one.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah, And now you can, I think, still visit this
area through that very bridge that was constructed, the bridge
that the Russians almost built, which is now a single small,
two lane road bridge over the Tug which is just
a single lane tunnel bridge that is covered in graffiti,
(27:05):
which I love that in and it's almost like its
own little mini Berlin wall.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
And this is where our story ends today. However, never
fear it's not the end of our show. We will
be back with more strange dare we say, ridiculous tales
of people, places, and events throughout this the weird experiment
that we call human civilization. In the meantime, we want
to hear from you, folks. Do you have any stories
(27:32):
from it? I in particular will be personally fascinated by
any stories of the Appalachian Mountains. But regardless of where
you live in the world, do you have any stories
like this, any very isolated towns that had to use
unorthodox means to for survival?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, any bridge related stories? And hey, if you're a
New Yorker, are you a bridge or a tunnel person?
What do you prefer? Let us nice? It really is.
Cab drivers are often after that, and I'm like, I
don't know which everyone's best.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I think part of it is, you know, the cab
drivers will present it in terms of what's better given
traffic patterns. But a lot of people do have crippling
fears of either going on bridges, like my mother hates bridges,
or they have a fear of going into the ground,
you know. So it's really is a polite way to
(28:24):
ask which terrifies you least.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
That's a really interesting way of looking at it, and
I never thought of that, So let us know which
terrifies you most or least. You can write to us
at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can check out
our social media presencies at Facebook where you can join
our group called the Ridiculous Historians, which we find to
be a lot of.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Fun, and you can follow us both personally. We have
our very own instagrams nol you've got one, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
At Embryonic Insider and.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
I'm at ben Boland Thinks as always to our super producer,
Casey Pegram thanks to we're research associate. Friend of the show,
Christopher hasiotis who we're overdue to have a guest appearance.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
We really are.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
He's always the best.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
In fact sometimes on the One thing you have to
do to join Ridiculous Stories on Facebook is say who
name one of us as the host and occasionally some
whole named Christopher, which I appreciate because he appears so infrequently,
his appearances must really make an impact.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
I love all the guests that we have on our show,
and you know, it gets weird, but always weird in
a good Way. Thanks also to Alex Williams who composed
our track, to our research associate Gabe and Noel. Thanks
to the people of West Virginia.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Really, they are resilient people and they know how to
get stuff done. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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