Off the Path Revisited: Where the Appalachian Trail Began

Every Halloween, WSHU’s Off the Path gets a little .... spooky. Visits to Lizzie Borden’s house, a haunted pirate cave, and Sleepy Hollow, to name a few. This year, reporter Davis Dunavin finds himself on a boat in the middle of New York Harbor — surrounded by creatures of the night — for New York City’s 5th annual vampire cruise.The Gothic Vampire Cruise on the Hudson is co-hosted and features music by The Sedona Effect

The origins of the word "podunk" are shrouded in history. In the Algonquin language, it most likely meant a boggy place, a swamp or a junction of streams and rivers. But we now use it to mean a small, unimportant, and isolated place. There was also a tribe called the Podunk, one of many who lived and fished on the Connecticut River.

The Appalachian Trail stretches more than 2,000 miles from Maine to Georgia. It was the brainchild of an idealistic forester who drew inspiration from a mountain top in Vermont. 

We like to picture Theodore Roosevelt as this vigorous, energetic, hyper-manly guy. And he was. But he didn’t start that way. He began as a bedridden, asthma-stricken boy in New York’s East Village. He went through a lot to become the guy who led the charge up San Juan Hill and served as our 36th president.

Back in the summer of 1989, a lot of weird little stickers appeared on the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. They were on walls, trash cans and utility poles. You’d find them outside bars, record stores and skate shops. They were all the same, a grainy black-and-white picture of a bulky scowling man, with the words: “Andre the Giant has a Posse.”

 It began with one of America's richest men jumping out of a moving train to trudge through the mud and scope out the property. It was the cultivating grounds for the 'queen of American etiquette,' Emily Post, as well as the most iconic men's suit in the modern world. This week, join us for a tour of Tuxedo Park, New York! 

Everyone knows the story of the first manned airplane flight, right? The Ohio-based Wright Brothers flew a biplane more than 850 feet across North Carolina’s Outer Banks in December of 1903. That historical event is featured on the license plates and on the state quarters of Ohio and North Carolina. But some people say someone else deserves the credit: a German immigrant named Gustave Whitehead. He supposedly flew his flying machine two years before the Wright Brothers in Fairfield, Connecticut.Additional mixing by Bella Fabbo.Historical voices by Carter Dewees and Bill Buchner.

The first widely-played video game wasn’t Pong, or Donkey Kong, or Space Invaders. It wasn’t made by Nintendo or Atari. Instead, imagine a bunch of scruffy young nerds at MIT in 1962, given free rein over the latest computer technology. The result: Spacewar!

This season on Off The Path, Davis Dunavin digs deep to explore the origins of things that are ubiquitous, Teddy Roosevelt, the tuxedo, the first video game, as well as those stories we think we already know, like the first airplane flight or stories that aren't as well-known, like the beginnings of the artist behind the Barack Obama “Hope” poster. But every single episode involves an element of surprise, an ironic twist or a fascinating connection you might not expect when the story begins.

In the mid-1800s, a father and son spent years digging a long, winding tunnel into solid rock on a hill in Lynn, Massachusetts. They said they were looking for lost treasure—with directions from a ghostly pirate.