National Park After Dark - Island of Death: New River Gorge National Park

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

In this week's episode we head to New River Gorge National Park, the newest National Park in America. At face value, this new and beautiful park is full of fun activities and beautiful landscapes. But, if you dive deeper and really take a look at the smaller, less known areas, there are very dark stories that reside here. Red Ash Island, a place many visitors  pass by without a second thought, lies a graveyard of over 200 people and their stories. This week we're taking a fresh look at forgotten ruins and travel back in time to learn about what they once were. For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Listen Now to Killer Psyche from Wondery. Quip: Take care of your oral health, good health starts with good habits. BetterHelp: Get 10% off online therapy Athena: Silky smooth razor kits. 20% off your first order with code NPADFor a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally. Breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders.

That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Hiking within our national parks has become an ever-increasing activity.

It is a place where people wander off into the wild landscapes for adventure or for solitude. The quiet, seemingly untouched, beautiful land offers something that other areas just don't. They're special. They're protected. And when you enter them, you can't help but feel like you're part of something way bigger than yourself. It's different here because everything creates a sense of wonder. It is protected. It is special. But why?

On a hike you go in in your hometown or a nearby mountain, you might pass an old structure, or a stone wall that seems just a little out of place, or maybe even a small graveyard. And in a fleeting thought, you wonder, what could this have been? And then it passes and you keep going. But when you pass the same exact things inside of a national park,

now you really wonder what happened here. And why is this here? Because it's protected, and it's special. In New River Gorge National Park, there are lots of old abandoned structures, old enough now that they're being engulfed by the flora surrounding it, walking these beautiful, serene, quiet trails, filled with blueberries and beech trees, wild flowers and rhododendrons, it's hard to imagine this could be anything but a beautiful place of peace and serenity. But you're wrong. This place is filled with death and tragedy. And if you're standing in the right place,

you're walking on top of hundreds of dead bodies. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hi everybody. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Lovely to see you and to have you here. We are back home, well, Vermont and Washington, back from California in Joshua Tree, which was an awesome vacation. It was my first time in Joshua Tree and Cassie got to explore the Channel Islands for the first time. I did and it was amazing. So we had a wonderful time. Thank you to every single person that came to our live virtual show. It was so much fun. It was definitely a way different experience being in person and recording. It was just we had a learning curve being in a fancy studio in L.A. We had somebody, you know, working cameras for us and working our equipment. It was a little overwhelming at first. But I feel. felt like we were we were naturals with it. I had so much fun doing it in person. I just felt like when we're talking over Zoom, sometimes there's like a delay and we talk over each other and in person, we can like look at each other and you're right there. It was so much fun. And it was really fun to see how excited everyone was for the live show and all the really nice comments that you guys were saying.

It just meant a lot to us that you all came and joined us. And it was our very first live show. So we were so stoked that you were all there and it was really, really special to us. We hope to do more in the future. And for anyone that purchased the exclusive merch during or before the show, we just got all the orders. It was kind of delayed until after the moment was done. So now that we have all that information, we'll be processing it and we're working on it and we'll have that out hopefully by the end of the week. So just sit tight on that. You'll get your stuff soon. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session.

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we're getting into december it's the holidays and i'm not doing an episode on the holidays at all okay i was like back into i'm just recognizing that it's the holidays um so we are going to be heading to west virginia for this episode which i feel has been a heavily asked park that we visit. I agree. It's the newest national park that's been established, and that is the new River Gorge National Park. I'm very excited to hear about it because I know very little about this place, and I've never even been to the area. I've never been to West Virginia. Everyone's been to West Virginia. Are you being sarcastic? No. Because, I mean, everyone's been to West Virginia, whether you've been there or not because, you know, the song,

Country roads, take me home to the place. Don't, you can talk. It's okay. I belong. Someone get this girl a record deal. My record's coming out next year. Okay. It'll be on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, because it will only be on this podcast.

Okay. Well, thanks for taking us there. And I just had flashbacks to college. It'll come on at a bar and everyone was like so excited to like start screaming at the top of their lungs. Especially when it gets to the West Virginia, everyone's like, West Virginia, Mount Mama. It's like, sir, we're in Key, New Hampshire. Relax. Okay.

Virginia is hours away. Chill. Okay. Anyway, okay, so let's actually go there to New River Gorge, for real. So New River Gorge, like I said, was very newly established. It was established on December 27, 2020. So not today when it's coming out Monday, but next Monday is its one-year birthday. Happy early birthday.

But before it became a national park recently, it was designated as a national river in 1978. I never knew there was anything such as a national. It was protected because this river is actually the second oldest river in the entire world. How old are we talking? It's estimated to be between 10 and 360 million years old. Quite a span. There's 350 million years that we're unsure of, but either way, it's millions of years old. Right. Okay.

Another thing that makes this river interesting is that this is one of the only rivers in America. that actually flows from south to north. Oh, interesting. Okay. And these flowing rivers are actually what are continuously creating the features that are part of the new river gorge, including exposing over a thousand feet of sandstone and shale. There are also boulders that are the size of houses that the river has created, and there's these steep drop-off cliffs.

Another thing that these rivers have helped create has been coal. and the coal that is formed inside of this park is actually some of the best coal in the entire world. And I don't know much about coal and how it's formed and the properties of it or anything. But from what I was reading, it said that this coal actually burned smokeless. So it was a high commodity. People really wanted it a long time ago. So this park has a huge history of coal mining. Okay.

Another really important and significant fact about this park is that the river here has been globally recognized as being significant as they contain some of the most diverse flora and fauna in the Appalachian Mountains. This park contains many endangered mammals, birds, and amphibians. There are over 63 mammals that live here, including the Virginia big-eared bats and Indiana bats. There are 48 known amphibian species that live here, including four different types that are endangered. And this park also serves as a major stop in the north to south migration of birds. On top of this, there's also 53 rare species of plants that have been found here. So there's a lot of really important resources and life that lives within this park. So no wonder it's been designated as a park.

And it's not just used for preserving the park. There's a lot of activities that go on here, too. The waters of the New River Gorge are some of the best whitewater rafting in the whole country. The Gorge is also one of the most popular rock climbing destinations in the entire country. And there's also a ton of fishing that's done within this river. And there's a lot of hiking trails within this park. So people come visit from all over to come participate in these activities. And we are going to do our own hiking heading into this park. So I want you all to pack your things like we're going on a hike because I'm going to take you down a hike to a special area of the park that is filled with devastating morbid, horrible history. I, you know, you said it's not a holiday episode, but I just felt like you gave me a gift just now. I'm so excited. This is the person who went to a cemetery to celebrate her birthday. Oh, my God. I didn't post about that or like anything and I was going to because it's just so funny because, okay, so before we get going with this, just really quick, Cassie's like, we had our live show on the 9th and my birthday was the 10th.

And she's like, all right, well, what do you want to do on your birthday? And we had already been gone and back from Joshua Tree and we're in L.A., which is like the antithesis. of what Danielle likes, okay? So I'm like, what can I do in L.A.? That is something that I would kind of like, Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Like, I want to go there. And Cassie and her partner out were like, oh my God, okay.

So we're going. I'm like, isn't that's the best? And they're just like, this is great. And I have a video of Cassie from behind. She's walking around like these huge, I guess it was like one of the mausoleums. Or what was it, what is it called? with all the

Which part? I know, this cemetery is gigantic. But kind of where Lucille Ball was, like the indoor. It's not a single mausoleum. Oh, I don't know what the name of that was, but it has stuff for like tons of people and it's indoors, and they had places to put the flowers and photos and things like that. Yeah, there was like, it was like, it looked like a library shelf of just hundreds of people.

It was beautiful. It was. And I just have this video of Cassie, like, looking around. Like, in her, she's like, she's not dragging her feet, but she has, like, hiking shoes on and, like, a plaid shirt. And she's, like, looking around, like, what the fuck am I doing it right? I'm, like, skipping behind her. I just thought it was a really cool place. It was your birthday so we could do whatever you want.

She's like, okay, it's only once a year. Moving on. Okay, so anyway, we're going somewhere that I would also really like. Yes. I think you would actually really like this. So we are going to head into a remote area inside of the park known as Red Ash Island. This is a little piece of land that during some parts of the year is completely surrounded by water. So on this hike, make sure you bring some waterproof shoes just in case.

This time of year in December, the creek around it should be dried up and you won't need waterproof boots. but to be safe and on the other side of this area of the island is the river. So it's kind of separated and when these creeks fill up with water, it becomes completely surrounded by water. So for this story, we're going to be heading into the park and traveling on to the Red Ash via Southside Trail. And make sure you're wearing some good shoes for it because this is a 7.7 mile trail. It's relatively flat, but it does gain almost 500 feet in elevation. But we're not going to be completing this entire trail, because our destination is hidden only about a mile in. For this trail, you're welcome to bring your dogs with you as long as you bring a leash.

And if you prefer to take your mountain bike, you could grab that too. So we're not going into the creek. Or it's dry. It's dry. It's mostly dry. It'll be mostly dry. Yeah. It'll be passable to cross over and walk over.

So as we begin down the trail, it opens up to big path with tall white oaks and American beach trees that line. the trail. Normally in the summertime it's bright green and full of small shrubs in the forest floor, but today in December, it's old fallen tree leaves and all the barren branches that give you a big view of the sky. It's a little bit on the colder side this time of year. It's about 49 degrees, 9 degrees Celsius, so you want to make sure that you're wearing something warm. And as we head down the path and closer to the river, we head into a riparian zone, and the flora here begins to change with evergreens and shrubs. There's rhododendrons, but there's no flowers, there's short blueberry

bushes that line this whole area. And about one mile into the trail, we look to the left. And on what seems to just be another part of the forest, if you look very carefully, you can see a lightly trafficked trail. We're going to follow it and go down a small hill and cross over two creeks. There's plenty of rocks to hop across, but you want to watch your step because there is water. When you look around, you're able to see that where you are, the water has risen much higher than it is now. Because where we're heading, sometimes, this area is an island, but not in the dry season. After you cross the two creeks, we're going to head up a small hill and onto the top of the ridge. The fallen dead leaves are crunch under every step that we take, and about 100 yards in, we'll see it.

Unmarked tombstones that lie between several tall trees. Some graves are nothing but indentations of rocks in the ground. This is an abandoned graveyard with very little clues to what could have happened. And right now, you're standing in a place where hundreds of people have died. This 13-acre patch of land within the park has a very dark history that dates all the way back to the 1800s. This Red Ash Island is no stranger to death and to tragedy. I love this. Sorry, I'm so quiet.

I'm just like, I'm there. You know, what I'm saying. I'm there. I'm there on Red Ash Island. So as I said earlier, this area was some of the best burning coal in the whole country. And that made the red ash community nearby Red Ash Island a group of coal miners in their families. So there was actually once a town nearby called Red Ash. And in the 1890s, a smallpox pandemic broke out into the small town.

Now smallpox was a moderately contagious virus where people didn't appear symptomatic until 12 days after exposure. It began with a respiratory infection and symptoms were generally mild at first. It started with a headache, backache, fever, vomiting, and just overall not feeling very well. For a lot of these cases, people who contracted it would often begin to feel better. and after the second day, believe that they had just had a short spout of the flu. However, by day four, the virus would show symptoms of very painful lesions that would appear in the mouth, throat, and nasal passages. Within 24 hours of those symptoms, a skin rash would appear. Some of these rashes would begin to hemorrhage under the skin and into the mucous membranes.

These patients would often be the first to die. they begin to bleed from their nose, gums, or even their vaginas. On most patients, however, the pustules from the rash would push to the surface of the skin, and as long as these pustules didn't connect and run together, they had an okay chance of survival. If these pustules did connect, though, the victims ran a 60% chance of dying. As the rash progressed into the mouth and throat, many patients would have difficulty to eating and drinking and would suffer from dehydration. Around day 10, postules would start to break and let off a horrendous odor. This would often cause a secondary bacterial infection,

which would become as deadly as smallpox itself, creating fevers and vomiting. If a patient survived this long, near the end of two weeks, the postules would begin to scab over. By the third week, the chance of dying from this disease dropped tremendously. The whole of the whole, endeavor would take about a month, and if they did survive, they would be immune from ever catching the disease again. The problem, though, in the small area of Red Ash, West Virginia, was that smallpox had a mortality rate of about 30 percent. And there was only one hospital in the small little area, and when this pandemic hit, they announced that they would not be caring for or admit any patients with this contagious disease. How can a hospital just,

to do that. They're like, no, we're not seeing it. It's too contagious. It's too deadly. We're not touching it. It's like, okay, so by definition, a hospital is supposed to be treating and helping those who are ill. You would think. I don't know if you could pick and choose what you do, but okay. I mean, I get it. That's like, that's, when you started saying the bleeding from the gums and then you just went right to the vagina, I'm like, oh, Jesus. I don't know if it can get worse. And then it did. So I get it. I get it. But also, you kind of have an opposite. You do, but they didn't feel that way, which left this area with very little options. And they decided that their only option left was that they needed to quarantine any infected person. Because the mortality rate was so high, they needed to find a way for their people to

never contract the disease at all. That was when they came up with their next idea. And that was to send all the infected people out to the little red ash island, because it was remote and it was removed from civilization. This reminds me of the one you did in the, in, um, dry tortugas. Yeah, where there was the whole outbreak there and then the doctor came in and like helped everybody. What disease was that? I forget. Yellow fever. Yeah. Same type of deal. And they found a huge part of it was, um, that they weren't being sanitary and people weren't washing their hands. So a lot of people are actually dying from secondary infections and not the disease. That's so crazy that, I mean, that reminds me of, I forget, like, the exacts, but just as

the whole, like, sanitary and the disease spreading and all of that. For a really long time, I think I read it in the book called The Butchering Art, which is about all, like, Victorian era medicine. And there was this huge thing of, like, there was so, there was a big, rate, high rate of mortality in infants. And they couldn't figure out why. And it was because the doctors that were delivering the babies were not washing their hands between autopsy to delivering a baby. I do remember hearing about that. And that's disgusting also. Well, yes, it's disgusting. But then I think there was like a lot of pushback from the medical community when it came to that. Like, they're like, no,

that's not it, blah, blah, blah, and obviously times of change, of course, but it's just so crazy to look back on the history of medicine and to see the advances in developments, not only in actual medications and things, but just the way that things are done. Like, imagine, just be like, all of you guys, you got to get the fuck out of here. You got to go to an island and no one's going to see you. Like, that is just wild. Yeah, and they did. They sent all of these people out to this little island, they actually built three stone barrack style buildings that were set up to house them and they were known as pest houses. They had one building that was for men and the second was for women and children. And then the third building was for Dr. Rapold, who was a doctor

for the coal mining men, but was sent to help with the outbreak. So the coal mining industry actually owned this whole area because it was a town full of coal miners in their families. So they really ran and owned everything. So they sent out one of their doctors to help with the pandemic. Okay. The coal mining industry also provided box cars along the railroad tracks that were made to transport anyone who came down with the virus. So whenever a person was diagnosed with smallpox, a male nurse would escort the patients on a box car and into the pest house. When a person was diagnosed with smallpox, a male nurse would escort the patient on the box car and into the pest house, which to me kind of seems like it was like you're getting an escort because we need to make sure that you actually go.

Yeah, I didn't think about that. And I understand quarantining people. Like, Obviously, that's something that we do still. It's just way different. Yeah, and they're really, they're not going to a hospital, so they're not getting adequate care, even though I don't know if adequate's a good word for this because it's the 1800s, but a lot of these people that were getting loaded onto these box cars, they knew that they were most likely going there to die. A lot of people didn't come back from the island.

Oh, my gosh. You were either going there to get better and wade out your illness, or you were going there to die. And did they frame it that way as in like this is a potential place where you could get better? Or was it kind of like, all right, well, once you're heading there, that's kind of it. I think it was framed like you're going to go here while you're sick. We hope to see you again, but it's really deadly. So maybe not. Okay. So not a great feeling. Yeah. And this pandemic, I've actually ravaged this area for five whole years. And it's unclear exactly how many people parent. on this island.

But when the victim died, they were buried there. And often they were buried in unmarked graves or just small field stone markers. That seems kind of like, what did they tell their families? I mean, I'm sure they told their families, but there's just no record of how many people are buried. As far as I could find, there was no record of how many people. There is a record of how many, I shouldn't say that, because there is a record of an estimated amount of graves, but to what are from smallpox is uncertain. On this 13-acre little

island, there are over 200 graves that we know of. And that is because this wasn't the end of death and tragedy that struck on this island. There was a lot more to come. The Red Ash Coal Company owned and operated in this area. And on this hike, you can see the remnants of where where red ash mine once was a heavily worked area. There are these big stone mining ruins covered in dead leaves and new brush that lie on this trail. And they are old Coke ovens, which are big chambers created to heat and separate coal gases and water. And they're still there today. And these have a very dark history behind them as well.

On March 6, 1890, only five years after the smallpox outbreak was over, a crew of coal miners showed up in the early morning for their day at the Red Ash Mine. Their boss, who would do a pre-shift safety inspection and gas inspection before each shift was late to work that day. The miners who were paid off of their production and the weight of coal that was mined in a day, decided that they couldn't wait any longer. They were losing money, and they needed to head into the mine. So 46 men went to work that day without an inspection of the mine. Inside of coal mine tunnels, methane gas is produced naturally. When the men entered deep into the mine,

their exposed headlamps, which used open flames, created an explosion. Following the first explosion, it ignited explosive coal dust that was in the air and created another blast, which also ignited several kegs of powder that were used to blast coal during their mining. The explosion was so powerful that the mining equipment was found blasted more than 400 feet away into the river. The men who didn't die in the initial blast quickly suffocated on carbon monoxide in the air that followed the explosion. All 46 men didn't make it. Whoa. Oh my God.

So did they inspect the mines every single day? Yeah, it was protocol for the boss to come in and inspect the mine because of these gases that were known. And just to do a pre-safety check because coal mining was such a dangerous job. Clearly, yeah. Yeah. So what had happened was the closing crew the previous night to this incident had forgot to close some of the vent doors which allowed gas to build up in the ceiling pockets of the mine, which then those methane gases caught fire when open flames of their headlamps were exposed. Oh, wait, so they didn't open.

the vents that would allow that gas to naturally escape. So it built up overnight. Yeah, they had fan vents, and it sounds like they didn't adjust them properly to work. Oh, my God. That is horrific. Some of the bodies, they were able to recover from the blast, and they were sent home on trains to their families. But there were many others that ended up being buried. on that island. And by the end of the month, this mine opened for operation again. Quick turnaround.

Yeah, a few weeks later, they're like, okay, who else wants to go in? 46 people just died here. Yeah, and I'm sure it was huge news, especially in a coal mining community. Absolutely, absolutely. Many people lost their family members. There was huge explosion that happened. You know, this was really big news. but now if this little pocket of beautiful scenery and land hadn't seen enough death and devastation,

it was about to see some more. Only five years after the first red ash explosion, another one happened. Red ash mine over the past few years had been expanded and connected to an adjacent mine called the Rush Run Mine. and they had mine cars that would travel the length of the tunnels. Now on March 18, 1905, just after 9 p.m., there was a huge coal dust explosion. A mine car had run over some loose explosives on one of the sections of the track and ignited it. At the exact same time that this happened, one of the miners was outside taking, a smoke break and saw the result of the entire explosion from the outside.

According to the West Virginia Gazette, he wrote, I hope to never see such a thing again. When I saw that awful sheet of flame belched from the mountain, I thought the world was coming to an end. The fire shot from the opening nearly across the river to the cliffs on the other side of the valley. It seemed like a volcano had opened up and was about to envelop us with flame. What in the world? I just am picturing it like this guy's standing outside and they're tunnels, so they're small openings.

Just fire, shooting out across this valley. It's just insane. I guess when you said initially there was an explosion, obviously for the first, one to kill 46 people, it's obviously significant. But I was not envisioning it like a flamethrower type of situation of like eight. Was this one, how many people died in this one? Wow. I'm afraid to ask. Six hours after the initial explosion, they ended up sending in rescue teams to try and recover any miners that were inside and to see if anyone survived. So they sent in 14 men, but what they didn't know that in the first blast, it destroyed their ventilation fans.

And again, their open flame lamps and lanterns they used to navigate the tunnels, set off a second explosion, and killed all of the rescuers that entered the mine that day. What the, what is going on? Oh my God. In total, 24 people died that day. Wow. Including the 14. Yes. So 10 initially and, oh my gosh.

That is the definition of a tragedy, like all around. I can imagine being those families and the first. families who had people in the mind, they're like, okay, they're going in, like, maybe they're going to come out with someone. And then another explosion happening, the rescue people dying. And then not only is your hope for your loved one being alive gone, but now you've just watched all of these men who were in there just to help die as well. So I'm assuming they fixed the ventilation issue and then sent in recovery operation or something. So they did recover the bodies eventually after they figured it out.

I didn't look totally into exactly what they did. But they did. And it is believe that several of the people who died on that day are now buried in unmarked graves on the island as well. Well, yeah, because you said there's 200 known graves. Yes. So there's over 200 graves that are marked and unmarked on the island. So it's really unknown. There could be a lot more than that.

Right. And there are actually some newer graves with actual writing on it because a lot of these graves are just tombstones. And there are some that have engravings on it. And a lot of those are believed to have been victims of the influenza pandemic that happened many years later. Although it wasn't associated with the island itself, they're just people who ended up being buried there. Okay. Interesting. It's just like, like, I mean, obviously that's kind of the theme of the story, but it's not what comes to mind as a pleasant final resting place. Like all of these people seem to have met a really either tragic or sad or difficult end, like either being very sick or being involved in an accident.

etc. They're all untimely deaths for sure. Yeah. But not everything on this island is all devastation. In more recent years, this island has been used for happier occasions. And I say more recent, but in the 1940s, a baseball diamond was added to the area. And there are three small swimming holes that have become a favorite place for visitors in the hotter months. And there was also a dance platform that was added to this little area at some point that was used for many celebrations for years. So all of this horrible stuff happened here and then they kind of turned it around and made it like a happier occasion. That's just too, it's so interesting because same thing with the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Like it's obviously, it's not the same as far as, you know, the people who are buried there.

And unmarked graves. I mean, that cemetery, everyone had like, thousands of dollars put into their headstones. Yes, it's very beautiful. Obviously, everyone who is interred there is, you know where they are. And they have beautiful headstones or mausoleums, etc. Whatever. But my point was like, though, remember I was like, you know that this is on the National Historic Register. And they have events there all the time. They have concerts there. They have what was it? It was the second largest. Dias de los Merto celebration is held in that cemetery aside from like Mexico City itself. And it's just like the way that you can turn a place with a lot of sadness into a place where you can also come together and celebrate. You see that popping up in different cemeteries and places like you're describing. And I think that's so interesting. Yeah, like death doesn't always have to be this horrible, ugly thing that you shy away from, you know, like, so that was in the 40s they did that. Yeah, it was in the 40s that they built the baseball diamond and all of these things.

But the island and the town of Red Ash was actually abandoned in the 1950s. So there's no remnants of, or there's no town of Red Ash anymore. It's not on the map. You can't find it there. It's gone. There are remnants of buildings and things like that all over the stuff. National Park really because it has a ton of history. A lot of this remnants are slowly being taken over by the vegetation in the area. But this island in particular can be accessed by hiking trails

or you can kayak to it. And it's actually really common for people to walk right by this on the trail because it's off the trail when you're hiking and for people to kayak right by this area and have no idea all of the history that happened here. I'm so glad that you did this. I'm so glad that you did this. because I think it's something that we can all relate to. I mean, how many times have you been hiking somewhere? And you're like, oh, that's weird. Like, I wonder why that's there. Exactly.

It's like, it's apparent that this is, especially like you said in the intro, in national parks, you pay a little bit more attention to it because you know it was left there on purpose. And it wasn't just removed. Like, you know, so everything has a story. And sometimes you just don't know it that it's even there. And you just walk right over it or right by it. And you're just like, oh, that's odd. Anyways.

You see something old and it's kind of like, oh, I wonder what that was, whatever. And you keep going. But there's all these places with so much interesting history that you just don't think about. And if you really take a deep dive into it, I mean, not all of it has to be this morbid and death and horrible tragedies. But actually, New River Gorge National Park is full of tragedy and death. So for this episode, I really wanted to focus on this little island itself because it is a hidden little area in the park that you wouldn't go to unless you knew this. So if you go to the park, go there. I mean, I saw a lot of videos of people going and it's a very, it's like a hidden little history lesson in there. But there's a lot of dark history in this park. And actually some of the worst tragedies in American history have happened here. which is a story that I'll get into another time and we'll revisit because there's some really devastating. There's a lot more deaths here than what we've covered in the spark.

Do you have it on your list? Because I really do want, like, I kind of wish that you would tell me right now and I know you're not going to. But like, I know that we have just, we have so many that we want to do and cover that it seems like they can kind of get lost in a sea of. of what we're going to do in the future. So please, please put it at the top of your list. It is on my list. It's on my list. It is on my list because it's really interesting. It deserves a whole episode, I think. And for this, for us first entering into the park, I just wanted to really go into some history of the things that we're going on in the park because it doesn't totally tie into this other story, but it's good to know about before we head into it. So we will cover that at some point, too. Perfect.

Well, we have the foundation of New River Gorge, and next time you do it, like, in a couple weeks, we'll know what to do. Perfect. Well, thank you for sharing with me and with everybody because I had no idea. And I'm really, really excited to learn more about this park, our newest national park in America. Yeah, and it really, just reading these stories and this information makes me want to go there more. And we had a lot of our listeners message us and send us pictures inside this park. And they're like, I've lived here my whole life. Now there's a national park.

I'm so excited. And I saw pictures. And I'm like, yeah, it looks really pretty, especially that bridge, which is the most photographed area in all of West Virginia. And it's like, wow, that looks really nice. Like if I'm passing through, but you don't look at it and you're not like, it's not like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon where it's this huge, dramatic thing where the history there doesn't even matter that much because, I mean, it does matter.

but when looking at it, you're like, I just want to see this. This is amazing. And when you know this history inside this park and the hikes and these hidden little things that you can do there, it's like, okay, now I really want to go here. Yeah, I'm intrigued. Well, you definitely captured my attention, so I'm stoked. Cool. Well, thank you everyone so much for joining us before we go, though. We have a really cool new show that we want to tell you about. Yes. So we are super excited about this show. and it's called Killer Psychie. We think you guys are really going to enjoy it as well. What makes a murderer's mind tick?

Killer Psychie is a true crime podcast from Wondry that explores these types of questions about the crimes that killers and criminals commit. Killer Psyche covers high-profile cases that have shocked the world, and host Candice DeLong uses her five decades of experience as a clinical psychiatric nurse and FBI criminal profiler

to dissect the motivation and behaviors of the most terrifying felons in history. And you'll definitely want to listen to a recent episode of Killer Psychie, where Candice explores the case of Pedro Rodriguez Filio, also known as Killer Pity or the Brazilian Dexter. At age 14, Rodriguez murders the major deputy in his own town, all because the mayor had fired his father. Rodriguez went on to murder, by his count, more than 100,000,

people, most of them while he was behind bars. To many, he was a hero, a vigilante seeking justice for victims, but to others, he was just a cold-blooded murderer. You can listen to Killer Psychie on Apple podcasts, Amazon Music, or you can listen ad-free by joining Wondry Plus on the Wondry app. From Wondry and Tree Fort, I'm Candace DeLong, and this is Killer Psyche. I've seen spent five decades studying people's minds through my work as an FBI profiler and psychiatric nurse. I've interviewed dozens of murderers, including serial killers, and the question of why they did it is what I get asked time and time again. I want to give you a satisfying answer, so I'm diving deep into the mindsets of these criminals to give you my best analysis of what made them do

what they did. This episode is Pedro Rodriguez-Filio. the Brazilian Dexter. To some, Pedro Rodriguez Filio, also known as Pedrino Montador, was a hero, an avenging angel. To others, he was simply a murderer, a very prolific one. The victims he sought out were criminals, or people that he felt were simply not good people. But that was not always the case. Pedro chose violence as a way of life when he was pretty young. When he was only 13, he tried to kill his older cousin by shoving him through a sugarcane press.

The cousin had punched and kicked him for riding his horse without permission, and Pedro couldn't let that go unpunished. The cousin survived, but was badly injured and lost his arm. In 1968, Brazil was under a stripped military. dictatorship. Students all over were protesting the repressive regime in power. Work was hard to secure, but Pedro's father had a good job as a security guard at a local high school, near where the family lived in southern Brazil. This all ended when his father was accused of stealing food from the high school cafeteria and was fired by the town's deputy mayor. This infuriated Pedro, so he took his

grandfather's shotgun and killed the deputy mayor in broad daylight in front of the town city hall. He didn't even try to hide his crime. In fact, his next murder occurred soon after when he killed the security guard that he believed had actually stolen the food that his father took the blame for. In Pedro's mind, this was justice. After the murder of the vice mayor, Pedro fled to an area near Sao Paulo. After some time burglarizing houses, he murdered again, this time a drug dealer, and he took over the dealer's business. The drug business was very competitive in Brazil at the time,

so he rationalized that he needed to kill some of his competitors. But life was looking up for Pedro. He met a woman, Maria Olympia, who became pregnant with his child. Tragically, Maria and his unborn child were killed by rival gang members. Pedro barely escaped with his own life. Seeking vengeance, Pedro recruited some friends and soldiers and began his own business. They crashed a wedding held by some of the rival gang members, killing seven of them and injuring 16 people.

He then proceeded to hunt down the rest of the members who participated in killing Maria. He tortured and killed many others in an effort to find everyone responsible for Maria's murder and kill them all. By the time he was 18, Pedro had already committed more than 10 murders, and he was just getting started. months after this killing spree, Pedro tracked down the man who impregnated his favorite cousin and left her, and then he killed him. Pedro was arrested for the first time on May 24, 1973, and that resulted in him being sentenced to 127 years behind bars. He was transported to prison with another convict, a rapist.

When the police opened the doors to let them both out, only Pedro was alive. The cops asked what had happened, and Pedro simply said that he killed him because he was a rapist and did not deserve to live. While in prison, Pedro went on to kill 47 inmates, which earned him the animosity of other prisoners, and they often tried to take him out, but failed. Pedro reportedly survived five men attacking him at once. He killed three of them and injured the other two. That's James Bond stuff. Pedro liked to call this time in jail his wartime period, and obviously killing a successful killer was very difficult.

It was during this time period that Pedro killed his own father in prison. Pedro's reputation for brutality was growing, and he would kill someone because he thought the crimes they committed were unforgivable. But some of his victims had not done much to earn his ire. He is said to have killed one man because he snored too loudly, and another because he didn't like the man's face. Pedro had become the judge, jury, and executioner for many of the inmates in his prison, and he would dole out his brand of punishment to those he felt were unfit to live. This earned him comparisons to the TV show Dexter, where the main character kills other killers. These prison murders also earned him an additional 400 years to his 100,

27 years sentence. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average. Pop over to Progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit Progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back.

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