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MoundLore

@MoundLore • 83,450 subscribers

I write things. America’s often forgotten past. Fact-driven. Lore-obsessed. Mounds, myths, maps& LiDAR. I understand people.

Shorts

Before I-10, before interstates, before driving across America became ordinary, this chunk of coquina in St. Augustine, Florida marked the beginning of a road to San Diego. It’s the Zero Milestone of the Old Spanish Trail. The route was conceived in 1915 and eventually stretched roughly 2,800 miles across the southern United States. Getting there meant stitching together roads, bridges and ferries across some of the hardest country in America to build through. By 1929, motorists could follow it from the Atlantic coast of Florida to the Pacific coast of California. And this was Mile 0. I enjoy coming across old named highways. The Lincoln Highway. Dixie Highway. Old Spanish Trail. Before roads became numbers, people sold them almost like adventures. Most of the Old Spanish Trail eventually disappeared into newer highways. The road survived. Its name mostly didn’t. But the old coquina Zero Milestone is still sitting there in St. Augustine.

Before I-10, before interstates, before driving across America became ordinary, this chunk of coquina in St. Augustine, Florida marked the beginning of a road to San Diego. It’s the Zero Milestone of the Old Spanish Trail. The route was conceived in 1915 and eventually stretched roughly 2,800 miles across the southern United States. Getting there meant stitching together roads, bridges and ferries across some of the hardest country in America to build through. By 1929, motorists could follow it from the Atlantic coast of Florida to the Pacific coast of California. And this was Mile 0. I enjoy coming across old named highways. The Lincoln Highway. Dixie Highway. Old Spanish Trail. Before roads became numbers, people sold them almost like adventures. Most of the Old Spanish Trail eventually disappeared into newer highways. The road survived. Its name mostly didn’t. But the old coquina Zero Milestone is still sitting there in St. Augustine.

64,881 Aufrufe

One of the richest men in the Pacific Northwest set out to build a mausoleum unlike anything else in Washington. Hidden in the woods near Roche Harbor, the McMillin Mausoleum was designed with Masonic symbolism throughout… unfinished columns, ceremonial stairways, and architecture meant to speak in symbols as much as stone. It was supposed to be crowned with a bronze roof and surrounded by landscaped grounds. Instead, construction simply stopped. More than a century later, no definitive explanation exists for why it was abandoned. The monument meant to preserve one family’s legacy became a monument to something else entirely: Even immense wealth can’t guarantee you’ll finish the story you planned to leave behind.

One of the richest men in the Pacific Northwest set out to build a mausoleum unlike anything else in Washington. Hidden in the woods near Roche Harbor, the McMillin Mausoleum was designed with Masonic symbolism throughout… unfinished columns, ceremonial stairways, and architecture meant to speak in symbols as much as stone. It was supposed to be crowned with a bronze roof and surrounded by landscaped grounds. Instead, construction simply stopped. More than a century later, no definitive explanation exists for why it was abandoned. The monument meant to preserve one family’s legacy became a monument to something else entirely: Even immense wealth can’t guarantee you’ll finish the story you planned to leave behind.

24,157 Aufrufe

Most people look for Cahokia in the dirt. That makes sense. The mounds are still there. But I think that is where the story starts, not where it ends. The real story may be what left with the people. 🧵

Most people look for Cahokia in the dirt. That makes sense. The mounds are still there. But I think that is where the story starts, not where it ends. The real story may be what left with the people. 🧵

19,350 Aufrufe

The Buffalo Dance

The Buffalo Dance

26,106 Aufrufe

I always figured Bishop Castle was one big construction project. It isn’t. Jim Bishop bought forty acres in southern Colorado as a teenager with plans to build a family cabin. In 1969, he started laying stone from the property. Then he came back the next day. And the day after that. Walk through the castle today and you can almost read the order it grew. One tower needed stairs. The stairs led to an iron bridge. Another section took shape. Years later came stained glass, a ballroom, and eventually the steel dragon that still breathes fire above the trees. Walking it nothing feels like it was built all at once. Older stone sits beside newer work. The welding changes from one section to another. Some ideas grew larger than he probably imagined. Others stopped exactly where they ended. People describe Bishop Castle as something one man built. Standing in it, it feels more like decades of ordinary work that never really stopped. One more weekend or one more wall. Most landmarks preserve a finished place. Bishop Castle preserves the years it took to get there.

I always figured Bishop Castle was one big construction project. It isn’t. Jim Bishop bought forty acres in southern Colorado as a teenager with plans to build a family cabin. In 1969, he started laying stone from the property. Then he came back the next day. And the day after that. Walk through the castle today and you can almost read the order it grew. One tower needed stairs. The stairs led to an iron bridge. Another section took shape. Years later came stained glass, a ballroom, and eventually the steel dragon that still breathes fire above the trees. Walking it nothing feels like it was built all at once. Older stone sits beside newer work. The welding changes from one section to another. Some ideas grew larger than he probably imagined. Others stopped exactly where they ended. People describe Bishop Castle as something one man built. Standing in it, it feels more like decades of ordinary work that never really stopped. One more weekend or one more wall. Most landmarks preserve a finished place. Bishop Castle preserves the years it took to get there.

10,336 Aufrufe

Anyone else with waterfall videos? 😬

Anyone else with waterfall videos? 😬

12,448 Aufrufe

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In the California mountains, a train disappears….then reappears above itself. A century and a half old, still working every day. They call it the Tehachapi Loop. Built in 1876, carved into granite by 3,000 Chinese laborers using black powder and shovels.

In the California mountains, a train disappears….then reappears above itself. A century and a half old, still working every day. They call it the Tehachapi Loop. Built in 1876, carved into granite by 3,000 Chinese laborers using black powder and shovels.

2,580,204 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

Chief Iron Tail and Buffalo Bill

Chief Iron Tail and Buffalo Bill

672,650 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten

WTF is going on in Illinois?! Cahokia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico. Its Interpretive Center closed in March 2022 for a “one year or more” renovation. The public was told roughly $5 million. Four years later, the museum is still not fully open. Reporting says the cost is now around $12 million. The roof alone was about $1.4 million. The mechanical/electrical work ate millions more. The HVAC apparently “just wasn’t working.” This is public stewardship failure at one of the most important archaeological sites on Earth. This is one of the places that permanently destroys the myth that North America was an empty wilderness. Illinois had one job: preserve and interpret one of the most significant Indigenous cities ever built. Cahokia should be treated like a crown jewel of human history. Instead Illinois managed its museum like a busted storage room behind a county office. This isn’t over.

WTF is going on in Illinois?! Cahokia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico. Its Interpretive Center closed in March 2022 for a “one year or more” renovation. The public was told roughly $5 million. Four years later, the museum is still not fully open. Reporting says the cost is now around $12 million. The roof alone was about $1.4 million. The mechanical/electrical work ate millions more. The HVAC apparently “just wasn’t working.” This is public stewardship failure at one of the most important archaeological sites on Earth. This is one of the places that permanently destroys the myth that North America was an empty wilderness. Illinois had one job: preserve and interpret one of the most significant Indigenous cities ever built. Cahokia should be treated like a crown jewel of human history. Instead Illinois managed its museum like a busted storage room behind a county office. This isn’t over.

159,674 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten

A guy in the Florida Keys spent five years building a 40-foot lobster for a restaurant. The restaurant went out of business before he finished the lobster. That’s Betsy. Sculptor Richard Blaze started building her in Marathon around 1980. She’s 30 feet tall, 40 feet long, made of fiberglass and modeled in ridiculous detail after an actual Florida spiny lobster. After the restaurant disappeared, somebody saved her. She ended up at another roadside attraction, went into storage when that property became a school, then came back out in 2009 and landed beside the Overseas Highway in Islamorada. She’s still there at mile marker 86.7. This is the kind of America I never want completely cleaned up. The restaurant is gone. The original roadside attraction is gone. Somehow the giant lobster won.

A guy in the Florida Keys spent five years building a 40-foot lobster for a restaurant. The restaurant went out of business before he finished the lobster. That’s Betsy. Sculptor Richard Blaze started building her in Marathon around 1980. She’s 30 feet tall, 40 feet long, made of fiberglass and modeled in ridiculous detail after an actual Florida spiny lobster. After the restaurant disappeared, somebody saved her. She ended up at another roadside attraction, went into storage when that property became a school, then came back out in 2009 and landed beside the Overseas Highway in Islamorada. She’s still there at mile marker 86.7. This is the kind of America I never want completely cleaned up. The restaurant is gone. The original roadside attraction is gone. Somehow the giant lobster won.

63,941 Aufrufe • vor 29 Tagen

There’s a 900-foot stone wall on a Georgia mountaintop, and somehow the wall is the least strange part. For two centuries people kept reaching for anything but the obvious. Welsh explorers. “Moon-eyed” builders. Lost races. The wall never changed. Only the explanations. 🧵

There’s a 900-foot stone wall on a Georgia mountaintop, and somehow the wall is the least strange part. For two centuries people kept reaching for anything but the obvious. Welsh explorers. “Moon-eyed” builders. Lost races. The wall never changed. Only the explanations. 🧵

259,456 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

Johnny Cash wasn’t a flag-waving patriot. He was a front-porch patriot. His America wasn’t built around Washington. It lived in prison yards, coal towns, church pews, freight trains, reservations, county fairs, and kitchen tables. He believed the country was carried by ordinary people long before politicians ever spoke for it.

Johnny Cash wasn’t a flag-waving patriot. He was a front-porch patriot. His America wasn’t built around Washington. It lived in prison yards, coal towns, church pews, freight trains, reservations, county fairs, and kitchen tables. He believed the country was carried by ordinary people long before politicians ever spoke for it.

91,364 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten

George Carlin got arrested in Milwaukee in 1972 for saying seven words onstage. Six years later those words were in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Carlin’s point was pretty simple. Americans could talk about sex, war, death, bodies, bodily functions, almost anything, as long as they used the approved vocabulary. So he named the words that had somehow become radioactive. Milwaukee police arrested him after the routine. The case got tossed. Then in 1973, WBAI in New York played his “Filthy Words” routine in the afternoon. They warned listeners first. One guy heard it in the car with his son and complained to the FCC. Pacifica said that was the only complaint they knew of. That one complaint turned into FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. By the time it reached the Supreme Court, Carlin wasn’t even part of the case anymore. The country was now arguing over what his record had exposed. The routine wasn’t legally obscene. You could buy it. Print it. Perform it. Hear it in a club. But could the same protected speech become punishable because it came out of a radio at 2 in the afternoon? In 1978 the Court said yes, 5-4. That decision helped shape broadcast indecency law for decades and Carlin basically walked right through the whole thing. He hosted the first SNL. HBO gave him the room network television wouldn’t. He made 14 specials and spent the rest of his life going harder at language itself: politicians hiding war behind cleaner words, advertisers polishing bullshit, people inventing euphemisms so they don’t have to say what they actually mean. A dirty-word bit he did in his thirties ended up being cited in constitutional law. The cops couldn’t kill it. The FCC couldn’t contain it. The Supreme Court couldn’t really settle what made the words dangerous in the first place. After years of hearings, briefs, arguments and moral panic over whether Americans should be allowed to hear Carlin say them, the Supreme Court itself printed the routine in the official record. So if anybody ever asks where you can find George Carlin’s seven dirty words preserved for posterity, one answer is: the United States Supreme Court. shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits

George Carlin got arrested in Milwaukee in 1972 for saying seven words onstage. Six years later those words were in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Carlin’s point was pretty simple. Americans could talk about sex, war, death, bodies, bodily functions, almost anything, as long as they used the approved vocabulary. So he named the words that had somehow become radioactive. Milwaukee police arrested him after the routine. The case got tossed. Then in 1973, WBAI in New York played his “Filthy Words” routine in the afternoon. They warned listeners first. One guy heard it in the car with his son and complained to the FCC. Pacifica said that was the only complaint they knew of. That one complaint turned into FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. By the time it reached the Supreme Court, Carlin wasn’t even part of the case anymore. The country was now arguing over what his record had exposed. The routine wasn’t legally obscene. You could buy it. Print it. Perform it. Hear it in a club. But could the same protected speech become punishable because it came out of a radio at 2 in the afternoon? In 1978 the Court said yes, 5-4. That decision helped shape broadcast indecency law for decades and Carlin basically walked right through the whole thing. He hosted the first SNL. HBO gave him the room network television wouldn’t. He made 14 specials and spent the rest of his life going harder at language itself: politicians hiding war behind cleaner words, advertisers polishing bullshit, people inventing euphemisms so they don’t have to say what they actually mean. A dirty-word bit he did in his thirties ended up being cited in constitutional law. The cops couldn’t kill it. The FCC couldn’t contain it. The Supreme Court couldn’t really settle what made the words dangerous in the first place. After years of hearings, briefs, arguments and moral panic over whether Americans should be allowed to hear Carlin say them, the Supreme Court itself printed the routine in the official record. So if anybody ever asks where you can find George Carlin’s seven dirty words preserved for posterity, one answer is: the United States Supreme Court. shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits

26,798 Aufrufe • vor 20 Tagen

I remember cigarette machines being everywhere when I was a kid. Bowling alleys, restaurants, old motels, bars. Usually tucked against a wall near the payphone or bathrooms. Nobody thought much about them. They were just part of the room. Then they disappeared so completely that seeing one now feels like finding a piece of a building that isn’t there anymore. Funny how much of America vanishes like that. No demolition. No closing date. One day you just realize you haven’t seen it in 25 years.

I remember cigarette machines being everywhere when I was a kid. Bowling alleys, restaurants, old motels, bars. Usually tucked against a wall near the payphone or bathrooms. Nobody thought much about them. They were just part of the room. Then they disappeared so completely that seeing one now feels like finding a piece of a building that isn’t there anymore. Funny how much of America vanishes like that. No demolition. No closing date. One day you just realize you haven’t seen it in 25 years.

26,967 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

I was watching this 1950s footage and caught myself thinking, “Life really moved different back then.” Not cleaner. Not better. Just steadier. People walked like the ground wasn’t going to shift under them tomorrow. Days had a rhythm you could lean on. You can see it in the small stuff… the way they talk to each other, the way an afternoon just exists without rushing. And it made me pause a bit. When did we lose that? When did everyday life start feeling like a deadline you’re already behind on? I’m not romanticizing the 50s. They had their problems. But the pace in this video… it hits you. It makes you notice how fast we slid into a world built on noise, speed, and constant uncertainty. If you watch it, tell me what comes up for you. I’m curious what thoughts, memories or revelations this stirs with people.

I was watching this 1950s footage and caught myself thinking, “Life really moved different back then.” Not cleaner. Not better. Just steadier. People walked like the ground wasn’t going to shift under them tomorrow. Days had a rhythm you could lean on. You can see it in the small stuff… the way they talk to each other, the way an afternoon just exists without rushing. And it made me pause a bit. When did we lose that? When did everyday life start feeling like a deadline you’re already behind on? I’m not romanticizing the 50s. They had their problems. But the pace in this video… it hits you. It makes you notice how fast we slid into a world built on noise, speed, and constant uncertainty. If you watch it, tell me what comes up for you. I’m curious what thoughts, memories or revelations this stirs with people.

148,715 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten

Something at the bottom of the cliff at Serpent Mound i found curious. What do you see?

Something at the bottom of the cliff at Serpent Mound i found curious. What do you see?

111,966 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

Quick drive by of monks mound. Helps with the scale.

Quick drive by of monks mound. Helps with the scale.

61,542 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

How are we feeling about Ai Abe Lincoln?

How are we feeling about Ai Abe Lincoln?

15,211 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

Across the Great Salt Lake, engineers built a railroad that seemed to float. A wooden trestle 12 miles long, stretching across a sea of salt and mirage. They called it the Lucin Cutoff. Built by hand in 1904, over 30 million board-feet of timber driven into the brine.

Across the Great Salt Lake, engineers built a railroad that seemed to float. A wooden trestle 12 miles long, stretching across a sea of salt and mirage. They called it the Lucin Cutoff. Built by hand in 1904, over 30 million board-feet of timber driven into the brine.

21,461 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

It’s like glass. The buffalo rub at Jeffers Petroglyphs might be the most human detail there. Bison scratched the rock for centuries. People carved beside those marks. Same stone. Same corridor. Different lives, crossing in time.

It’s like glass. The buffalo rub at Jeffers Petroglyphs might be the most human detail there. Bison scratched the rock for centuries. People carved beside those marks. Same stone. Same corridor. Different lives, crossing in time.

10,840 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten

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