Tag: America’s History

Great Stalacpipe Organ Making Music in a Cave!

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It’s your favorite child travel adviser, Tyler the Boy on the Move, once again bringing you the best in last-minute vacations. Your road trip planner for the weekend getaway to the coolest and strangest places in America. How do I know about them all? My parents are contract workers in the software industry and keep moving the family every 6 months…So on this move, I got to hear the Great Stalacpipe Organ!

My parents just got a job down in Luray, Virginia, a sort of sleepy little town with some interesting history. While my parents were at work, I liked to walk around downtown to its cool shops and restaurants. The Page Theater is also pretty fun…

Cool Stuff in the Shenandoah valley

On the weekends we did some sightseeing together, checking out the Car and Carriage Caravan Museum, hiking up Stony Man Mountain, and exploring the Shenandoah Heritage Village. However, by far my favorite was the stop we made to the Luray Caverns — Luray is known as “the town where caverns meet the sky” after all!

 

The Great Stalacpipe Organ

 

Inside of the caverns (and covering just about 3.5 acres) is the world’s largest musical instrument. The Great Stalacpipe Organ! Whenever its played, little mallets strike different stalactites all over causing a beautiful and haunting tune. The whole cavern seems to pulse with the echoing sound!

The Great Stalacpipe Organ is technically not an organ at all (rather a lithophone)! Electric engineer and mathematician Leland Sprinkle, who worked at the Pentagon, designed it. When Sprinkle visited the caverns in 1954, the guides inspired him when they tapped the stalactites to show him their tonal range.

If you’re sold on hearing the “organ” but not on the tight spaces, you can always listen to recordings of the instrument (though it isn’t as cool as hearing it in person). However, if a giant musical cave isn’t for you (which I don’t know why it wouldn’t be because IT IS AWESOME), Luray does have plenty of other fun stuff too.  I mean, even the drive through the Shenandoah Valley is pretty amazing! You could also visit the Hawksbill Greenway, the Luray Rescue Zoo, the Warehouse Art Gallery, or the Luray Singing Tower.

Thanks for stopping by!

See you next time!

~ Tyler

To find out more about Tyler visit Salem House Press and buy Tyler’s latest book “Tyler Moves to Gibsonton Florida”. It is now available in paperback at most bookstores. Ask for it by name, and keep checking back for great cheap vacation ideas that might end up being the best vacation you ever had!

New Installment of Summer Cottage from Hell from The Sinclair Narratives

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Another installment  to keep you entertained during this time of containment

 

This week Henry, Tesla, Teddy Roosevelt, John Hammond Jr. (Hammond Castle), and President Taft meet at the Essex Country Club in Manchester. There Telsa and John Hammond Jr. argue if flesh can be reanimated after death and we meet General George Patton.

Come back every Tuesday for another installment of Summer Cottage from Hell appearing in the Winter Issue of Arkham Tales from the Flipside. A story featuring everyone’s favorite immortal, Henry Sinclair, and his third-generation Viking ragtag crew where they are out to solve the mysterious death of the man who rented President Taft his Summer Whitehouse for two years. Tesla, Roosevelt, Illuminati, and Lovecraft monsters fill this tale based on real events in Beverly MA.

http://www.salemhousepress.com/Arkham/Sinclair.html

Salem Fagin

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The First Boy’s Club and Tunnels…

The First Boy’s Club in the country was held in a building attached to this tunnel. In fact the three locations that the club first resided in were all attached to the smuggling tunnels in Salem MA. The first was the Downing Block next to the Peabody Essex Museum. The second location was in the Salem Lyceum that previous housed a lecture series where Alexander Graham Bell introduced his phone publicly at. The third location was in the old Essex County Bank building built by Charles Bulfinch who became the Architect of D.C. who built all the tunnels under our capitol.

The Boy’s Club learned an important early lesson; keep the kids in a brick building. For the one time they were housed in a wooden building, the Lyceum, they burned it down.  The location where James Russell Lowell introduced the Dante Club’s translation of The Inferno was burned to the ground by these children.

So why was it so important to have these economically challenged children in building attached to the tunnels? Were they helping the sailors and captains smuggle in town? Were they assisting in the runaway slaves attempts at gaining freedom? Or were they run by a Salem Fagin who had them act like the Artful Dodger and break into the homes that also were attached to the tunnels?

Who is to say, but it makes you think…

For more info read Sub Rosa to find out how Salem shaped America and your lives! Available at Remember Salem, Jolie Tea, Wicked Good Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com. Also to learn more stories like this first hand, book a tour with the Salem Smugglers’ Tour!

Salem House Press
http://www.salemhousepress.com

The Truth About September 11th

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I am President John Tyler…

I became president after the assassination of William Harrison. My whole administration walked out on me on September 11th. All except Daniel Webster who was settling the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with the Barring Brothers Bank which were bribing him to create the Third National Bank of the united States. I refused to make the bank and my administration walked out on me on the anniversary of Alexander Hamilton becoming the first Secretary of the Treasury and creating the First National on September 11th. The first and second Banks had their charters expire because they were dominated by English bankers like Baring Brother’s Bank. September 11th has always been an important date in American economic history and still is. Check it out for yourself.

For more info read Sub Rosa to find out how Salem shaped America and your lives! Available at Remember Salem, Jolie Tea, Wicked Good Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.

Salem House Press
www.salemhousepress.com

Vintage Salem Morning!

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4 Views of a Secret. This tunnel running from Essex Street to the Tabernacle Church under Washington Street was used to hide the loading of contraband from the smuggling tunnels in Salem. The first track on the frog entering the tunnel was built by George Peabody whose plan has bankrupted our country every 20 years up to 2008. The second track on the frog was owned by Thomas Perkins the opium dealer who would smuggle runaway slaves to his sweatshops in Lowell. Eight tunnels met in the back of the Kinsman Building (Opus Underground) and one left the front to this tunnel in the photos. Kinsman was superintendent of the Eastern Railroad owned by Peabody.

For more info read Salem Secret Underground: The History of the Tunnels in the City and Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin available at Wicked Good Books, Jolie Tea, Remember Salem, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.

Vintage Salem Morning!

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Old Town Hall built on William Brown’s mansion property. William Brown was a Tory and ran to Newfoundland during the Revolutionary War. His kin Lucy Brown Derby inherited it and gave it to her father in Law Elias Hasket Derby Sr. This became America’s first millionaire’s 4th mansion in town. He only got to live in the mansion for a year before he died. Then Lucy got the mansion when her husband Elias Hasket Derby Jr. inherited the property. After spending his portion of the 10th largest estate in American history, Elias started selling off the mansion and grounds little by little.  In 1814 he will sell the property to the town to build Old Town Hall. Tunnel designers Samuel McIntire and Charles Bulfinch worked to create the building. One tunnel leaves the back of the building and connects to the Old Naumkeag Trust Building. It was helpful a few years ago to run cable for internet between the two buildings…

For more info read Salem Secret Underground:The History of the Tunnels in the City and Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin available at Remember Salem, Jolie Tea, Wicked Good Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.

Vintage Salem Morning!

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Greenlawn Chapel and Greenhouse Salem Ma

Greenlawn Cemetery, Chapel, and Greenhouse. Under this chapel 4 tunnels meet. One heading out to Orne’s Point where the Widow Orne sold bricks to keep her property to be used to create the tunnels in Salem. Her kin Secretary of State Timothy Pickering bought 40,000 bricks from her in one order when a house only needed 8,000 bricks.

For more info read Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin available at Remember Salem, Jolie Tea, Wicked Good Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.