Original subtitles

Tom ward (narrates): A Caribbean island

once home to a powerful industry

and a divided people.

They set fire to the one thing

that the company really, really cares about.

An isolated ghost town in america where dreams were made.

This was simply not something

you would expect to see 11,000 feet up.

It demonstrates just how much wealth there was here.

A waterlogged stronghold off england's coast

born from a time of fear.

At face value it looks like something

from mad Max meets waterworld.

What's it doing there?

And in the mediterranean

an ancient village caught in the crossfire.

Neighbour feared neighbour,

the atmosphere had changed it had become dangerous.

Decaying relics...

Ruins of lost worlds,

sights haunted by the past,

their secrets waiting to be revealed.

High in the San Juan mountains in Colorado usa

is a land of shattered dreams.

It's strikingly beautiful

and on a sunny day it's even idyllic

but you can't help

but wonder what this place looks like in the winter.

For anyone living out here you have to be pretty resilient,

the weathers here are fierce.

Snowstorms, avalanches, freezing cold temperatures.

It's not the normal place

you'd expect people put buildings

so there must have been a good reason for them to be there.

From above it's clear that there was more to the site

than the structures still standing today.

As you come closer you see the outlines of streets,

you see the foundations of old buildings.

Clearly lots of effort was put into some of these,

you've got some sort of quite ornate wooden structures,

some really quite nice buildings.

And others have seen better days,

they look as if they have been destroyed

by some other outside factor.

What promise of riches first lured settlers

to this inhospitable land?

There must have been something that we can't see,

something hidden from view that made all this effort

in construction worthwhile but what was it and where did it go?

David singer is a preservation expert

and helps to look after what's left of the site.

So, this building is a jail, it was built in 1882,

this was law and order on the frontier.

Buildings made of wood, but the planks are laid flat,

so the walls are all six inches thick.

People would try and break out of the jail of course,

but people would try and break into the jail

if they wanted to have their own kind of vigilante justice

and, er, you know law and order was here

but it was also taken in to your own hands occasionally.

In the mid-19th century,

the United States was a land

gripped by wild optimism and naked greed.

This place was a part of that story.

Once the federal government opened up this land

to western settlements it opened the floodgates,

suddenly Americans were coming in from the east coast

and immigrants were coming from other countries to seize

whatever other opportunity this land had for them.

Untamed frontiers like this were where fortune seekers

chased the elusive American dream.

Its impossible to overestimate

how inhospitable an area this is, in 1884,

a 23-day blizzard dumped 25 feet of snow

on the region.

People had to dig tunnels

just to get from building to building.

But what these people wanted was worth the terrible hardship.

The San Juan mountains

form part of the Colorado mineral belt

and this is an area that's famous for hard rock ores

caused by mineralisation associated with volcanic activity

and what you find is, that this volcanic activity

caused veins of gold, silver, lead, copper rich material

to be intruded into the rocks around them,

but its actually very, very hard to get this material out

because it's in the solid geology.

As early as 1873 some groups had started to explore

the animas river

and gold and silver deposits were discovered pretty early on.

Log cabins started to sprout up, scattered all around the place,

and within a year or so the animas river area had become

a central focus of hard rock silver and gold mining.

This is animas forks a remote mining boomtown

built on the promise of precious metals.

This would have been the main street area,

there are two streets, little street and hanson.

This area would have been bustling with miners

going to work in the mills and the mines,

carts full of equipment and materials.

Kids playing, children going off to school.

Perched at around 11,000 feet

this was one of the highest altitude mining towns

in the country.

Animas forks became a substantial town over a time,

but it really began to see some of its biggest developments

after the sawmill and lumber mill were created.

The saw mill was producing over 4,000 pieces of board a day

just so that it could accommodate the number of people

who were here at the time.

Within three years there were 30 cabins,

a general store, several saloons,

a pharmacy, and a post office.

Even had the kalamazoo hotel

which was the grandest and largest building in the area,

it also had the town's only telephone

and this beautiful grand piano.

Animas forks was a bustling Metropolis.

In 1882 the animas forks pioneer

began publication

and it was the highest altitude printing press

in the us at the time.

Clearly this town was in it for the long haul.

At its height 400 people called this place home.

For one family drawn here theirs was a story

that captured the reality of what towns like this

were really all about.

When the Duncans moved here in the late 1870s,

they were considering this to be a place

that was going to grow and develop

and become a full-fledged town and so they built a home

that was commensurate

with modern living in the victorian era.

The amazing views out into the mountains

from this bay window were unrivalled

for this kind of living having a bit of culture

while you were kind of on the frontier as a pioneer.

This was simply not something you would expect to see

11,000 feet up the side of a steep mountain.

And it demonstrates just how much wealth

there was to be made here.

But pride comes before a fall, and soon the Duncans

and other townspeople would learn that lesson the hard way.

The town's boom period

came to a sudden end on October 22nd, 1891.

A huge fire burned down most of the business district

causing over $20,000 in damage.

The fire actually originated in the kalamazoo house kitchen

and then it ultimately ended up

spreading throughout the rest of the town.

And to add insult to injury mining had already begun to taper

and so with these two things together

this was a really crucial moment for the people of animas forks.

Only five years after they arrived

the Duncans left animas forks,

their dream of striking it rich in tatters.

But not everyone packed their belongings in such a hurry.

The town kind of lay fallow for a while

until it was revived again some time after 1904,

when the gold prince mill was being constructed.

This is a gravity-fed mill

and so that's why you are seeing the foundation

of this large building tiered

as they did things to the order process.

At its peak it had a 500 ton per day capacity,

and it was fed ore

by this incredibly impressive

12,600 foot aerial tram line.

And so this does reinvigorate life at animas forks

and it does begin to draw more investors

and more people back to this town.

But making a living out here balanced on a constant knife edge.

Things were going swimmingly and looked like

things were improving a lot in this area

until unfortunately the owners of the gold prince mill

went bankrupt in 1907.

When it was no longer profitable the town's days were numbered.

After the gold prince mill closed down in 1910,

people moved on

and there was some sporadic repopulation here

in the '20s and then the '60s,

but the town was never occupied again.

For centuries the pursuit of gold has driven humankind mad with greed.

A hard life of feast or famine,

that shaped not only the landscape but the world we live in today.

It might seem that the story of animas forks

is just another story of a boomtown gone bust,

and sure in many ways it is,

but it's also a story of lives made,

lives lost in the process

and we shouldn't forget that part of it.

Off england's southern coast in the waters of the solent

is a structure born in an age of fear.

The first time I ever saw this

I was sailing out of Portsmouth through the solent

and there up ahead of us looked like it was an island.

And we got closer

and it can't be an island its too round.

Its state of decay suggests this is no modern construction.

This is really falling to pieces.

The concrete is crumbling

all the metal is corroded

this has clearly been through some really tough years.

Inside is a labyrinth of dark passages.

And as you explore further you can see

that there is a whole series of inter-connecting corridors,

some of which are so tight you have to squeeze past,

it's a real claustrophobic environment.

It's unobstructed views of the surrounding waters

are clearly key to its original purpose.

But would it ever be called into action?

That rather unique circular design

is a really crucial clue as to what was going on here.

Another important fact to consider

is that there are other emplacements just like it.

There has been a lot of thought

put into this very tightly knit, very strong structure.

Did it actually serve it's purpose?

In times of war the United Kingdom

has always had the advantage of being an island nation.

This hulking mass of concrete was a vital part of the strategy

to ward off foreign invaders.

There are a number of things that were built on top of it,

that are clearly from world war ii.

There are outposts, there is place to put guns

and its very reminiscent for many of the structures

that we see along this coastal part of the UK.

Dom hones lives nearby on the mainland

and is an expert on this unique slice of history.

We're downstairs in the cartridge cellar,

which is the lower basement floor of the fort,

and quite simply down here

was where all of the ammunitions was initially stored

before it was taken up to the high levels

to the gun emplacements to be used.

These stores here would have been absolutely packed

in different size of shells depending on the erm,

size of the gun.

But literally they would have lined up against the wall

er, they would be filled up in this space

so the soldiers could come and get them erm,

but literally in absolute mass of fire power

in every one of these stores.

The entire fort stood on top of a powder keg.

But the design of these lower levels aim to minimise the risks.

If you had an accident here

and er, an explosion hit here it would be absolutely catastrophic.

Having lots of different rooms,

very thick walls around them as well er,

meant that you know, if there was a problem or explosion

it would limit the damage,

you wouldn't lose sort of the entire basement floor.

Clearly this structure was designed for war,

but it doesn't seem strong enough

to withstand the extraordinary fire power

marshalled by the Nazis.

This was not something that could withstand

the type of warfare that was waged in world war ii

I mean you could either just bomb it from the air

or you could hit it with heavy shells from a warship.

But these structures from world war ii

are these built on something that pre-existed?

And is that the key

to what this place used to be used for?

A century before Hitler's forces terrorised Europe

the threat of invasion came from much closer to home.

In the old days

england's ancient enemy was France.

And of the continental powers France is the closest one,

its only a few miles

across the English channel from britain.

Construction here began in 1861.

A time of heightened tension

caused by an ambitious French family dynasty

with a score to settle.

France's new leader was Napoleon Bonaparte III.

The nephew of the famous Napoleon Bonaparte

who had fought an epic battle against britain

before finally facing defeat at trafalgar and Waterloo.

You can imagine why his descendant might hold

just a little bit of a grudge against the British.

The prime minister at the time Henry John temple,

third viscount palmerston was a very popular man

and he decreed that it would be useful

to set up a series of defences

against any potential attack from the sea.

There was good reason to think an attack was imminent,

the French were embarking

on an aggressive ship building programme.

Technologically advanced and unparalleled in its might.

The French military was developed

so that they had you know iron clad erm warships

including la gloire.

Britain had yet to develop an equivalent armoured warship,

its ageing wooden fleet didn't stand a chance.

The la gloire was a major threat to britain,

palmerston knew that the French ironclad

would sail right up a royal Navy fleet

and that the cannons of those ships

could do very little to dent the ironclad hull.

Britain was put on the back foot almost over night.

The ironclad was a kind of undefeatable super weapon.

In response palmerston ordered a royal commission

to assess the United Kingdom's ability

to repel foreign invaders.

Its findings spread panic.

If you can't get the royal Navy

to suddenly convert to ironclads you've got to defend

the royal Navy's ports with something else.

You've got to defend them using armoured fortresses instead.

This is horse sand fort,

one of a chain of four sea-based defences

intended to protect the key naval position of Portsmouth

from French attack.

In today's money each stronghold costs around 40 million pounds.

And they were part of a far larger nationwide plan

that would come to define palmerston's time in office.

It's difficult to build at sea at the best of times,

you imagine how hard it must have been in the 1860s

and what they would do is they would sail

these preformed concrete blocks out to the site

and drop them to form the foundations

on the sea floor and build up from there.

And eventually you can build up out of the sea

and build the structure of these fortresses.

Above the foundation was the basement level

divided radially into compartments for ammunition,

the outer most passage was designed to allow

additional armour to be bolted on to the exterior of the fort.

When completed in 1880,

there was enough fire power

stored inside to sink any approaching fleet.

So, here we have one of the gun emplacements

there would have been 49 in total, 25 on one level, 24 on the other.

And this is where the main gun emplacements were

and the main fire power for the forts.

Originally been up

to 12.5 inch rifle muzzle loading guns,

huge, huge, sort of, 38 ton guns.

In a period of battle all of these guns

would be fully manned er, you know up to 600 soldiers

er, maximum capacity on the fort

er, and they would be running around with ammunition,

running getting loading, getting ready to fire

er, fire reload er, and a huge amount of effort

er, and that would have all gone on here.

On the fort's upper levels,

the troops kept around the clock watch

for any approaching enemy.

The way that these forts were designed

was that they created a line of defence

across the entire solent that the French Navy

would have to pass through in order to get to the shore.

Had they attempted to get through

they would have to come through

between horse sand fort and no man's fort

and they would have been obliterated from all angles in every area

and stretch of water in between would have been covered.

When the alarm sounded which could have been

any time of day or night the soldiers

er, had to you know, stop whatever they were doing and,

and take the call to arms.

But that call to arms, never came.

In the early 20th century,

the dynamics of britain's relationship

to its continental allies shifted dramatically.

The unification of Germany

really changed the equation on the continent.

Lord palmerston gears up for French attack that never comes,

the crisis and relations with the French passes

and in fact the French and the British come together

in the middle of the 19th century and are as close allies

as two nations can be for decades.

For the man that ordered construction of the forts,

these defences became a damming part of his legacy.

The official title is the solent fort,

but while they were built,

they were given a different name by a derisive press,

they were called palmerston's follies.

And palmerston's ambitious to his defence building programme

didn't end there.

Across the south coast

more than 80 forts were commissioned to this day

it was the single most expensive military project

undertaken by britain during peace time.

Palmerston saw a potential threat from France.

With hindsight you might say that lord palmerston was foolish

to build all of those fortresses

with a massive investment of national wealth,

but only with hindsight.

Even after the fort was repurposed

for use in the first and then second world war,

the guns stayed silent.

There has never been a shot fired in anger from horse sand,

the closest they got to it was during world war ii

when one of the French war ships sought refuge in Portsmouth

and that the only time the cannons on the forts

were targeted on that ship

just to ensure its safe passage into the harbour.

A decade after the world's deadliest conflict ended,

the fort was decommissioned,

it still stands empty

an ocean albatross motivated by fear.

But horse sand fort may yet be given a renewed purpose.

If you can turn these old forts

into something nice,

there is potential to make a lot of money.

A lot of old British military office buildings,

fortresses have been turned into luxury apartments

and there's no reason why if you can work out

the transport problems,

you couldn't do that with these fortresses as well.

On porta rico's southern shore stand the remains of a fallen giant.

As you approach from the water you see

what looks like a Caribbean paradise

but as you get closer you see the vast ruins

of some kind of big industrial enterprise.

Those conveyor belts and chutes and chimneys,

there is a massive pier heading out into the water,

obviously we are taking something away,

there is some transportation involved,

but what was it for?

Surrounding the industrial zone are clues

that this operation was even bigger than it first appears.

There is also signs that it is a typical town here,

there is all sorts of little buildings,

different shapes and sizes, some very domestic.

Some clearly for the community.

You see it looks like it might have been a hotel,

everything built for those tropical conditions

with large verandas,

lots of big windows for the breezes to blow through.

But the layout of this town suggests not all was as it seemed.

Whatever this place was you can see

that it obviously housed a lot of people,

but there appears to be something off with it.

You can spot

that there is two very, very different standards

of living.

It almost seems like

there was something dividing this town

but what was it and where have all the people gone?

The rusting structures that cling to the landscape today

were once the beating heart of this island.

Wilfredo Santiago lives nearby

and is fascinated by this run-down site's past.

So, I decided these facilities

was basically creating tonnes of this powder

that was in super high demand,

basically sustaining the economy of the country for almost 100 years.

So, right now we are standing at the central office,

were basically filled with desks,

a lot of processes a lot of paperwork,

it was the central hub of information,

every process went through here.

So, most of the workers here

in the central office were Americans,

where there were figures of power.

For four centuries Puerto Rico had been a Spanish colony,

but as the 19th century drew to a close,

a new superpower emerged

that would change the course of the island's history.

In 1898, a very short but intense war started

between Spain and the United States.

Within a year Spain had decided

there was no way they could win this war

and they actually granted the island of Puerto Rico

to the United States.

A lot of Americans saw Puerto Rico

as a wonderful opportunity for investment.

So, Ford & co, that's not the car people,

a different Ford,

acquired the land here and with it they decided to invest

a huge amount of money

in order to make an even bigger amount of money.

Everything was centred around,

and everything came to be

because of one commodity, sugar.

These are the ruins of central aguirre

a company town built on sweet white gold.

The employees worked sun to sun

what they call it sol a sol, which was basically 6am to 6pm.

And a lot of people there was no transportation

so if you live pretty far away from the area

you had to walk like one hour, two hours to get here,

so you were using almost all your life

working for a misery.

Profit was everything

and the surrounding neighbourhood grew

to support the booming industry.

You can't run a place like this,

just on a factory you need all the extra supporting stuff,

you need a town hospital, schools, places to workshop

it had the lot absolutely tied to the factory at its heart.

By establishing these communities around the factories,

factory owners were helping

to ensure a consistent and stable labour force

that in exchange for providing basic amenities and housing

they hoped they could get a certain sense of loyalty

from their workers and ensure

that they were consistently showing up

to do the job that they had on hand.

So, in the early 20th century the aguirre plantation

became the focus

of a lot of very modern industrialisation.

They realised if they could get the cane

from the fields to the plant,

crushed and processed and loaded onto ships

with the fewest human hands possible,

that would be the most cost-effective way

to run the whole operation.

By 1920, production increased to record levels

generating over five million dollars per year.

The population here swelled

to almost 6,000 mostly employees of central aguirre.

But for the workers a dark side would soon be revealed.

In theory providing this community

for workers is utopian

but if we actually look at the site we see that there is segregation

that runs rampant in the facility.

Where the American overseers lived in these lovely houses

they socialised strictly among themselves,

and they had the best of everything.

The people from Puerto Rico who lived there

lived in very modest housing.

The accommodation was of such poor construction,

little of it survives to be seen today.

So, here its not just about civil planning,

making life beautiful for everybody,

there is a hierarchy and there is apartheid.

You've got one area that is for the Americans

and you've got the other area that is for the locals.

This division didn't stop at the housing.

At the American hotel

the deep-seated prejudice was painfully clear.

It got to a point

that if it a puerto rican snuck in or walked in

and got into the pool they would completely dry it out

and clean it so they could refill it,

they basically had this idea that Puerto Ricans were dirty,

were unhygienic and were filthy.

For more than three decades, the sugar mill thrived,

and profits soared.

But it was all at the expense of the workers,

segregated on their own island.

In time the employees would fight back

against the poor wages and mistreatment.

Beginning on the 26th December 1934,

a wave of strikes sets off across Puerto Rico,

and this has huge implications

for the sugar processing industry.

They set fire to the one thing that the company

really, really cares about

in order to get people to pay attention.

You have a number of workers

who destroyed about 2,900 cords of sugar cane

at an enormous loss to the factory and the factory owners.

This was particularly catastrophic,

but it was effective in that

they were able to negotiate some better terms.

Over the next decade it's a constant battle

to improve worker's rights and conditions,

balanced up against the new machinery

that's being brought in.

It was not until they started to unionise,

and you know fight for the right for more money and more equal pay

that they started to get a little bit more stable

in the whole community.

But their hard won rights didn't last for long.

Despite continual efforts to modernise production

the sugar industry here was entering a terminal decline.

By the mid-60s the boom was ending,

the end of the road was becoming visible,

the price of sugar was collapsing.

The American owners effectively abandoned the town

and its taken on by the local and national government.

But by 1993, the writing was on the wall,

this was not a profit-making town anymore

and the factory closed

and with it the town just fell apart.

Today the abandoned company town

is no more than a ghost of Puerto Rico's colonial past.

One of the first global trades

that really affected normal people wasn't gold,

it wasn't precious metals it was sugar.

It's fascinating to see the remnants

of what was once this thriving industry

and also to understand the degree of exploitation

that was involved in this business.

In the eastern mediterranean sea on the island of Cyprus,

is a collection of ruins tainted by tragedy.

Among some pretty hills

is a stone village this is not fancy,

but it is absolutely clear

from the way this has survived that the people

who built this place built well, they built to last.

Some stone stairways are still visible,

and windows and doors give an idea of what the place used to look like.

The odd assemblage of buildings

that they could date from almost any era,

some look quite old, some look less old.

The sense you get from all of this

is that this is a place that has been inhabited

down the ages potentially by different cultures.

And yet the people are all gone

and this whole area would have been cultivated

and yet now its empty.

What story of sorrow weighs heavy on this land?

And why is this village now abandoned?

There was an underlying divide in the country

which had been bubbling away for decades,

came to the surface

in the most violent and shocking way.

For many locals traditional Christian belief

lies at the heart of their community.

Christodoulos papaminas is a farmer in the neighbouring village

he fondly remembers the simple way of life here.

In time events on the island would tear this village apart.

A single building holds the key to its sudden abandonment.

If we've got a mosque here in the village,

this is a sign that this might have been

not a Greek orthodox village

but a Turkish Muslim village.

And in the history of Cyprus

and the recent history of Cyprus, that's significant.

Cyprus had for many years been a country

made up of two groups,

the Turkish Cypriots and the Greek Cypriots.

The Greek Cypriots are predominantly Christian orthodox

whereas the Turkish Cypriots are predominantly Muslim.

For many, many years they lived happily side by side.

This is foinikas,

a once idyllic mediterranean village.

Within living memory, it was home to 235 people,

yet life here was not always peaceful.

Cyprus enjoys a really strategic location,

and because of its key position in the mediterranean

and because of its relatively flourishing economy

and its good natural harbours,

Cyprus was battled over by the powers for centuries,

the Greeks, the romans, the venetians, the Turks.

The run-down walls are evidence

of one of the earliest occupying forces.

In the 12th century the knights templar

called this place home,

they built the village from stones

from the nearby vertical rock faces.

During the violent era of the crusades,

the knights templar protected European Christian travellers

visiting sites in the Muslim controlled holy land.

The templars want to control Cyprus

because it will enable them

to strengthen their control

of middle eastern trade routes.

So, the knights templar build

what they call a commanderie

that is a command post here in this village.

It may have been founded at a time of religious conflict

but over the centuries the people learned to live together.

Over the years of coming to trade with fellow cattlemen

christodoulos made many friends.

But trouble was brewing

the religious tensions

central to the holy wars of the crusades

would resurfaced hundreds of years later.

So, this growing tension between the Greek christians

and the Turkish muslims explodes into open warfare in 1974

when the Greek government lead by a military junta

decides you know we are going to annexe

the island of Cyprus because its largely Greek,

it belongs to Greece.

Turkey's response

to the Greek Cypriot nationalist coup d'etat

is to seek to protect the Turks of Cyprus

by invading Cyprus.

The island instantly descended into violent chaos,

in the fog of war both sides were guilty

of committing unforgiveable atrocities.

Now, neighbour feared neighbour,

the atmosphere had changed it had become dangerous,

what once had been a peaceful landscape of coexistence

had been shattered, its such a waste.

After 30 days bitter fighting a ceasefire was agreed

soon after the country was divided.

And as a condition of the ceasefire

there were massive population transfers,

tens of thousands of Greek christians

migrated from the now Turkish zone in the north of the island.

To the now Greek zone in the south of the island

and the same thing happened on the other side.

This village on the south of the island

was now part of Greek held territory.

The civilians of foinikas were caught

in the middle of the chaos and had to decide what to do,

it had been a Turkish village for years

but now they were being told

that they are on the wrong side of the border.

Fearing reprisals, the Muslim occupants fled,

christodoulos remembers only too well

the trauma of this terrible period.

Over four decades have past

since the shocking events

that transformed this mediterranean island.

Yet Cyprus is still a country divided.

The Turks of northern Cyprus are convinced

that if they let their guard down for even a moment

the Greeks will take over.

The Greeks of Cyprus are convinced

that if they let their guard down for even a moment

the Turks will take over.

And the partition of Cyprus remains

part of the daily life of that island to this day.

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