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

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

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

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

Today, only pieces remain.

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

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

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

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

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