Original subtitles

Tom ward (narrates): An appalachian dream

that conjured the spirit of the old west.

The romance of cowboys and lawless frontier towns

are etched into the American psyche.

An extensive complex,

part of a project that turned Guernsey

into the most fortified place on earth.

And the channel islands become the home

of what was known as Hitler's island of madness.

In the caucuses,

a sky high solution to a ground based problem.

One Soviet TV station described chiatura

as the venice of the air.

And a Chinese island of simple means

stranded by a revolutionary tide.

It was a brutal time of mass incarceration and murder.

Decaying relics, ruins of lost worlds,

decaying relics, ruins of lost worlds,

sites haunted by the past,

their secrets waiting to be revealed.

In Maggie valley, north Carolina

set high in the appalachian mountains

is a ruin that once promised fun and adventure.

There's what looks like an old western town.

There's a main street in the middle and on either side,

there are general stores, saloons, and even a jail.

America's full of deserted towns.

And this place is high up in the mountains,

so it could be the remains of an abandoned mining town.

But somehow this feels a bit different.

That's because this is a world of make believe.

That's because this is a world of make believe.

When you really look, it's very clear this is not old.

None of this is real. It's just been made to look old.

The real giveaway is this massive structure

that was obviously a roller coaster

and there are different amusement rides

throughout the place.

So, this was a theme park, but what happened to it?

Inside there are smashed up arcade machines.

There's a stage for performers

and the costumes have all been left out,

which suggests that people upped and left here in a hurry.

A theme park with no people is spooky

and eerie and some of the locals even say it's cursed,

which begs the question, why did everyone leave,

why did it close?

Dave angel lives in Maggie valley.

Dave angel lives in Maggie valley.

As a child, he loved nothing more than a day out

at this much treasured attraction.

This is magical place to everybody that grew up here.

I have vivid memories from five, six years old

all the way up 'till I was a teenager.

Coming up here to see friends

that would perform and dance up here and family members.

The people that worked up here just had a community.

A lot of them would hang out together after work.

When the park would close, they'd play softball,

which is sort of hard in here,

but they'd play softball right here down town with each other

just to have fun with their friends.

When this theme park opened, it was the largest

tourist attraction in the area.

And it was all made possible by one man with a dream.

The original owner was Ronald Braxton coburn,

and he was inspired to build a wild west theme park

after visiting a number of abandoned ghost towns,

real ghost towns, on a family vacation.

Real ghost towns, on a family vacation.

The idea of a wild west theme park

wasn't exactly new.

But this one, perched on the side of a mountain

at around 4,600ft, was certainly unique.

Now, that's almost a mile high, hence its nickname

the mile high fun park, 'cause that's exactly what it was.

Construction started in September 1960,

and it was an enormous task, to say the least.

To accommodate the old west town, they had to literally shave

about 50ft of dirt and rock off the top of this mountain.

It took 200,000 plus feet of plywood to build this town.

Over 20,000 pounds of nails just to construct what was here.

People believed in this vision though.

The community, members of the town, investors,

they bought bonds to help them

making this come to life.

Making this come to life.

Coburn called his creation ghost town in the sky.

When finished, it was the highest wild west theme park in the world.

Yet for the guests that came here, the magical journey began

at the foot of the mountain.

So, this is the ticket booth.

This is where your day at ghost town would get started.

Big space here where people would start lining up

early in the morning, wait in line to grab their tickets.

In its heyday, thousands of people would come up to ghost town.

This would have been the gift shop.

During that time, all kinds of souvenirs were sold.

T-shirts, hats, they had sheriff's deputy badges,

cap guns, all kinds of things

that fit the western theme of the park.

Next up, punters had to ascend the mountainside.

The only way to get up there

was by a chair lift or a funicular train.

Was by a chair lift or a funicular train.

I mean, what a great way to start the day.

The higher you climbed, the more your anticipation grew.

At the summit, visitors were transported to another world.

There was a mining village where they could pan for gold.

There was what they called an Indian village,

where they could learn more about

indigenous life.

But the most popular by far was the old west town.

So, this is the silver dollar saloon.

Back in the day, this room would have been

filled with customers wanting to see a can-can show.

There'd be a table over here with gunfighters playing cards.

A gentleman would be playing piano with some kind of ragtime music

and the can-can dancers would come out on the stage

and dance for everyone's entertainment.

But what the guests really came for

were the staged gunfights.

They waited all day to see it.

It would happen at high noon and when it happened,

the explosions from the gun,

the bang, bang, bang, it was just so loud.

You could see the kids jumping.

Somebody dropped their ice cream.

Somebody would grab their mum's leg.

It was just a thrill to see

live action gunfight right here in town.

The idea of the old west is so important to Americans.

It's just one of those ideas of strength and independence

and it all gets wrapped up in this mythology

of the cowboy and his lasso and his hat.

Coburn also had some other tricks up his sleeve

to tempt in wild west loving visitors.

One of the tools coburn used

was he brought in well known actors of the day

to be there signing signatures.

Ghost town was host to many celebrities in its heyday.

The group from the 'beverley hillbillies',

the cast of 'bonanza' would come here.

They'd stay for days, even weeks,

making sure everybody had a good time.

They'd be parts of the gunfights.

One of the most well known celebrities

to come up here was Burt Reynolds.

In fact, the reason he left was when he got a part in the movie

'deliverance'.

When Burt went to shoot 'deliverance',

the bad guy in the movie,

you remember the line "you got a pretty mouth, boy,"

that was a gun slinger here at ghost town.

The original actor came from Hollywood.

He just wasn't authentic enough.

Burt said, "hey, I've got the guy if we can get him off the mountain."

His name was cowboy coward and he was perfect for the role.

Reynolds may have left, Reynolds may have left,

but ghost town in the sky was a roaring success

and by the 1970s

was regularly attracting over 500,000 visitors a year.

Things were going great.

So great, in fact, coburn sold the park in 1973.

After he sold the site, the number of visitors

started to decline quickly.

This park was coburn's baby

and he didn't really like the direction

where it was going.

And his son actually says that he wished he had never sold it.

And so in 1986, coburn buys it back.

One of the first things he did was to add more attractions,

including this roller coaster that's quite spectacular

and called the red devil.

It was amazing to come whirling down this roller coaster,

making this loop and looking way over the valley.

Looking at the blue Ridge parkway over there.

Looking at the blue Ridge parkway over there.

Twists and turns that went all over the place

and it would make its way back up

to the top here where you would get on and off of the roller coaster.

Coburn's investment seemed to work

and people started coming back in huge numbers.

For years it remained

one of the state's biggest attractions.

But as the new millennium dawned, it turned out frontier town

guns lingers were no longer the draw they once were.

Cowboys had just lost their appeal.

Those old westerns were something your parents did

and grandparents did,

not what the young people of the 2000s wanted to be doing.

Visitor numbers continued to fall and coburn

just didn't have the money to keep up the maintenance.

In 2002, the chairlift got stalled,

in 2002, the chairlift got stalled,

stranding passengers for over two hours.

This was kind of a last straw for coburn.

After the incident when the chairlift broke down,

he knew then it was time to put the park up for sale.

For the next five years, ghost town's gates remained closed.

It was in desperate need of renovation

and the high maintenance costs

made it a hard sell to prospective buyers.

In 2007 the park reopened under new ownership.

They poured $38 million into it, creating new rides, attractions,

shops, and restaurants.

Even with all that investment,

even with wanting it to succeed,

they were just papering over the cracks.

All those old problems returned.

In 2009, the roller coaster ultimately failed

some safety tests and that was the point

where it was decided it's just not worth the investment

where it was decided it's just not worth the investment

to continue to have the red devil cliff hanger

as an attraction.

Things weren't getting better here.

If anything, they were getting worse.

And certain locals started to claim that the place was cursed.

In 2012, a new set of owners

tried their luck but quickly found

they were fighting a losing battle.

Perhaps the most disturbing event happened in July of 2013

when one of the veteran guns lingers

was actually staging a routine and was shot and wounded

with what he said was an actual real bullet.

This understandably caused a lot of controversy.

And obviously it's something that should never have happened.

Shortly after, the park was closed and it's never reopened since.

In 2021, in 2021,

Dave angel was part of a team that purchased the site.

Ghost town is a magical place.

It never felt like this park was ready to close.

The new owners are under no illusion

about the size of the challenge ahead.

But it's one they are ready for.

The ghost town that's here today

probably won't be the ghost town of the future.

We'll be building something that's a little newer, safer.

But we'll still bring that feeling, vibe that people loved to see

when they walk the streets of ghost town.

Nostalgia is a powerful commodity.

So, there is hope ghost town in the sky

can come back from the dead.

In western Georgia,

high above the urban sprawl of chiatura

is a puzzling relic from the country's Soviet past.

You see a spider web network of old, rusting steel cables.

Some of these cables

run up to the tops of the steep cliffs,

others criss-cross the town.

Everywhere you look, there's a cable line

going somewhere.

It's not exactly clear

what these are for or why they're there.

At first you might think they're power lines.

But then you notice that there's cable cars

hanging off the wires,

so these were clearly built for transport.

The cable cars look like something you'd find at a ski area.

But there are no ski slopes here.

The concrete remains of a bygone era

betray the town's true origins.

The whole area has a strong industrial feeling to it.

This was not a place that people went for vacation.

This was a centre of industry.

Something is still being produced here

and perhaps that's a clue

and perhaps that's a clue

to the original purpose of this site.

There must have been a very good reason

to invest so much in building

this elaborate transportation network.

(Speaks foreign language)

Giorgi dvalashvili is an assistant professor

at Tbilisi state university.

When he was young,

the city of chiatura was his playground.

(Speaks foreign language)

The cable cars were originally installed

the cable cars were originally installed

to overcome the town's

extreme geography of steep-sided cliffs

and river gorges.

What motivated their creation was a valuable commodity

crucial to the production of iron and steel.

In the late 19th century,

prospectors found large deposits

of manganese in the cliffs above this town.

Manganese was an essential ingredient

in making steel.

So, without it,

you don't have one of the most fundamental building blocks

of the modern world.

In 1872, mining began

and the region was swiftly transformed.

Chiatura quickly became

the most prolific site for the production of manganese ore,

responsible for about 50%

of the world's supply.

A fact that, decades later, didn't escape the attention

of bolshevik leaders in Moscow.

Of bolshevik leaders in Moscow.

After the Russian revolution, the Soviets began

expanding their reach and incorporating territory.

They took over Georgia in 1921

and almost immediately set about

nationalising all the industries.

By the 1950s,

the officials in charge of mining in this district

recognised they had a huge transportation problem.

The daily trek up to the mine

was costing the company valuable production time.

By the time the miners arrived at work,

they were already exhausted,

dreading the journey back home.

At the same time,

their jobs were absolutely brutal

and miners sometimes would sleep in the mine shafts,

'cause it just took too long

to get back to their houses.

A solution was needed

a solution was needed

that would improve both the lives of the workers

and boost the mine's output.

These are the rope roads of chiatura,

a transportation network

that connected almost every corner of the town.

The cable cars were the brainchild

of the mine owners.

They realised if they could get workers

from the town to the mining sites

easier and with more convenience, they could convince

more people to work here.

(Speaks foreign language)

By 1954

there were 17 different lines operating.

Not just to transport people to the mines

but civilians all around town.

Of course the mine workers travelled for free,

but everyone else had to pay.

The rope way system was a resounding success

the rope way system was a resounding success

and the town flourished.

(Speaks foreign language)

Soviet rule

didn't just bring prosperity to the region.

One of the hallmarks of Soviet communism

was focus on ideology and children

were to be raised up as true believers.

They developed a program called the young pioneers

that was closely modelled on the boy scout.

(Speaks foreign language)

Despite being guided

by the hand of their communist overlords,

the people of chiatura never had it so good.

Because it was producing such a vital material

for the Soviet union,

chiatura became something of a boom town

and the workers were very highly valued.

(Speaks foreign language)

After the fall of the Soviet union in 1991,

Georgia declared independence.

The civil war that followed

devastated its already unstable economy,

devastated its already unstable economy,

plunging the country further into chaos.

The economic decline

was so sudden and so dramatic that in many cases

the power plants would just stop working.

The electric power would just go off for hours or days at a time.

It was very difficult to keep mines operating in those conditions.

The mines began to shut down and the people began to move away.

(Speaks foreign language)

Now, the mines lay idle.

The rope roads of chiatura gradually ground to a halt.

During the '90s,

no-one maintained or repaired the cable cars.

No-one maintained or repaired the cable cars.

There were actually more pressing priorities

for the country of Georgia.

In 2019 they finally made a decision

to shut down almost all of the rusting cable cars

and replaced the routes with buses.

Today the mines of chiatura are still operational,

but the industry is a shadow of its former self.

But that hasn't stopped giorgi staying positive

about the future of his home town.

(Speaks foreign language)

In the English channel

on the small island of Guernsey,

a terrible truth lies buried beneath the ground.

Guernsey is the second biggest

of the five channel islands

lying in the sea between britain and France.

It's a tranquil place with quaint villages

and a rugged coastline.

Then in this lush countryside you see the massive entranceway

into something underground.

The only way to discover the secret

this doorway guards is to pass through.

You descend

into these interminable long tunnels,

just hewn out of the rock and going on forever.

As you move through the dim light,

you start coming to side rooms

off the main corridor and you see bed frames,

off the main corridor and you see bed frames,

you see ordinary looking furniture.

It looks like a dormitory or a barracks or something.

How did it come to pass that this huge complex

was built on the British isles by an invading foreign power.

Many people might be surprised to learn

that a part of britain was occupied

by the Nazis in the second world war.

Paul bourgaize is the custodian of this site

and has been working to protect it for the last four years.

He first explored the vast tunnel system as a child.

The place was very, very daunting as a little kid.

You know, damp, dark, wet, very gloomy.

So, even though you can't see a lot from ground level,

obviously when we get in here, you can see how vast it is.

75,000 square feet,

1.5 miles literally if you walked on every chamber,

every tunnel.

Construction on this subterranean network

started at the beginning of the second world war.

And it's hard to believe that at one time,

there was a massive military presence there.

The channel islands are closer to France,

but they have been under the protection

of the British crown since 1066.

In the early days of world war ii, britain's war cabinet

made a decision that would seal the fate

of the island's people.

When the Germans invaded France in 1940,

the British had to make a decision, do we defend the channel islands?

And Churchill decided they're indefensible.

They had no strategic purpose.

They had no strategic purpose.

So, the British government gave up the channel islands,

including Guernsey, to the Germans.

Yet despite being abandoned by the country sworn

to defend them, Hitler was convinced

the allies would attempt to recapture the islands.

Hitler had this idea that

he had to cling to the channel islands.

So, he embarks on this

massive construction program of fortifications,

underground weapons and ammunition storage.

Everything he would need to use these island bases

as a weigh station on his way to an invasion of england

or his outworks for his defence of German occupied Europe.

So, work started in 1942

and really went on for 3.5 years

right through the occupation of Guernsey.

It was the largest single sort of structure

built in the channel islands during world war ii, so huge scale.

Originally, this part of the tunnel was designed as an ammunition store,

originally, this part of the tunnel was designed as an ammunition store,

so you see efforts in some of the chambers

with this asphalt to waterproof it.

You can see in the centre, where the tracks would have been,

they were using a narrow Gauge railway

to move the ammunition.

And the channel islands become the home

of what was known as Hitler's island madness.

At one point on Guernsey

you've got 12,000 German troops on the island,

which is one German soldier for every two inhabitants.

(Explosion)

At a time when conflict was at its maximum,

what was the most heavily fortified place

on planet earth?

It was not Moscow, it was not Berlin,

it was not Washington.

It was the isle of Guernsey.

And the price of such an ambitious building project

had a tragic human cost.

They used a combination of highly qualified

they used a combination of highly qualified

well-paid professionals

and volunteers and slaves.

And the slave labourers came from France,

from Belgium, from Poland,

from Russia and Spain for the most part.

They lived in various camps scattered around the island

in horrendous conditions.

Many died of malnutrition or overworking,

some had to use their bare hands to excavate the solid rock.

Slaves were given a simple choice, work or starve.

By 1944, the German war machines initial success had waned.

The tide had turned in the war and the allies were preparing

to launch a massive offensive and regain territory from the Nazis.

To launch a massive offensive and regain territory from the Nazis.

In anticipation of the attack, Hitler's forces

transformed this site into something else entirely.

They had to be prepared for defending the islands

against a prolonged assault

and that meant a lot of casualties.

They expected bloodshed and so decided that the tunnels

would better serve as a hospital.

And in 1944,

the Germans have experienced so much man power shortage

that they are starting to take greater care

of their wounded and they understand much better

how much closer to the action

their medical care facilities need to be.

This was the main operating theatre,

this was the main operating theatre,

you see the scrubs room there to our right,

those sinks.

And then we have a triage room at the end,

so all the treatment was happening in here.

It was large enough to house up to 500 patients

and included facilities such as an X-ray room,

dispensary, laboratory, it even had a cinema.

The countdown to invasion had begun

and Nazi soldiers stationed on Guernsey

were braced for the anticipated attack.

But the allies had other ideas.

So, the western allies hit the beach

in normandy on 6 June 1944,

it's d-day,

the largest operation of any kind probably ever.

And the amphibious forces

sweep past the channel islands,

the channel islands

the channel islands

are not important to defeating Germany.

Therefore, the channel islands

must wait to be liberated.

But wounded soldiers injured in France

were bought here and the hospital was put to use.

After d-day, the French were soon freed

from their Nazi oppressors.

For the channel islanders still under German occupation,

the consequences were grim.

Guernsey, still in the hands of the Germans,

was cut off from the rest of Europe.

The Germans are unable to bring stuff in and out,

including food, and so the people

are on the brink of starvation in those last months

of world war ii.

On 9 may 1945,

two days after the Germans surrender,

the people of Guernsey were finally liberated.

The Nazi hospital,

no longer of any use, was quickly abandoned.

No longer of any use, was quickly abandoned.

The war was hard everywhere, and it was especially hard

on that little green gem of an island

in the English channel.

It's been over 80 years

since the Nazis imposed their will on Guernsey,

a reality not always easily recalled.

The experience of occupation was something

everyone on Guernsey wanted to forget,

nobody wanted to remember the humiliation

of being a channel islander,

of being a loyal subject of the British crown

and having the Nazis there.

I've met people from various countries in Europe

and the UK

that did not know that we were occupied

by the German armed forces,

it's quite amazing really that they don't know that.

It's quite amazing really that they don't know that.

For Paul bourgaize,

the mission is to make certain no-one ever forgets.

Those people that were

living through the occupation will sadly soon be gone,

so we need to preserve these structures as a legacy

to that and the struggle that they went through,

through five years of occupation.

50 miles east of Shanghai, the small island of shengshan

rises boldly out of the east China sea.

It's remote and mountainous,

and at first there doesn't seem to be much here,

just the odd dirt road snaking through the hills.

As you get closer, you see a village that looks like

it's clinging to the cliffs, some of the buildings

are in tatters,

while others look like they're being remodelled.

It's all very strange.

The buildings are made of concrete.

They're one or two storeys, so it's obvious that

this is not some ancient village, it's something that was built

probably within the last 70 or 80 years.

The settlement size

suggests a substantial population once thrived here.

Furniture and belongings though decaying

bear testament to a previous life.

Any time you see a place where people used to live

and then they left,

we're always curious what drove them out.

Why did they decide to abandon

what looks like a pretty idyllic place to live?

This village weathered one of the darkest periods

in China's history.

Husbands and wives turned on each other,

children turned on their parents and teachers.

But there was one change it could not survive.

(Speaks foreign language)

Fu yuanfan was once a resident of this now deserted community.

(Speaks foreign language)

When fu grew up,

he followed in his father's footsteps

and became a part of the industry that bought wealth

to this remote island.

(Speaks foreign language)

China is the world's biggest fishing nation

and this village was all at the heart of it.

This is houtouwan, a once affluent settlement

built on the ocean's generous bounty.

(Speaks foreign language)

At its peak, the village probably was home

at its peak, the village probably was home

to 2,000 to 3,000 people

and almost everyone there

was there because of the fishing.

People all over China

knew about its reputation and they came here to settle.

And you can just imagine how alive it must once have been

with fishing boats bobbing up and down.

Houtouwan was riding high

and the sea was providing a good living for all.

But a storm was brewing on mainland China

that threatened to destroy it.

It was a brutal time of mass incarceration and murder.

In 1966, a deadly tide swept in.

The cultural revolution was launched

under the direction of the Chinese communist party

chairman mao zedong.

And what mao zedong really wanted to do,

wanted to accomplish was to route out

people considered bourgeois infiltrators.

People considered bourgeois infiltrators.

You had students denouncing their professors

sometimes beating them to death, you had husbands and wives

denouncing each other,

you had children turning against their parents.

Houtouwan as an affluent community

of entrepreneurial fishermen did not completely escape

the cultural revolution's destructive reach.

One facet of Chinese communism is deep distrust of individualism,

so farms were collectivised,

raising your own plot of tomatoes or rice

was really discouraged.

By the same token,

the Chinese government tried to reorganise

the way the fishing business worked.

And as happened in so many other parts of the economy,

that ultimately made

the whole process much less efficient.

The fate of the successful village hung

in the balance.

The collectives really didn't work,

the collectives really didn't work,

in fact they led to a lot of infighting among the people.

Why go out and fish for 18 hours

if your share is going to be the same

as your neighbour who only went out and fished for eight hours.

But as houtouwan's fishing community

grappled with changes forced upon their industry,

the architect of the cultural revolution died.

And with mao's death came fresh opportunity.

As the cultural revolution faded,

so did some of these government controls

over how different fishermen could operate.

Ironically, mao wanted to strengthen communism

and what it led to was a strengthening of capitalism.

(Speaks foreign language)

Some of the people in houtouwan

got more prosperous than others, and for a time,

the village did very well.

Tragically the newly found freedoms

had an unforeseen consequence.

As fishing technology began to advance

the stocks of fish in the east China sea

began rapidly to decline and the prosperity of the people,

which was built on fishing, gradually slipped away.

Big trawler ships came in with advanced sonar

and in this little harbour these tiny fishing boats

simply could not compete.

(Speaks foreign language)

In the 1990s,

the government in Beijing finally decided to act.

China imposed seasonal moratoriums

to protect fish stocks which were becoming

depleted but it really was too little too late.

(Speaks foreign language)

By 1994, almost everybody had left

and only a handful of villagers remain today.

They renamed the village wurencun,

which means no person village.

After the chaos of the mao era, China transformed

after the chaos of the mao era, China transformed

into an economic powerhouse, second only to the United States.

Fu embraces the opportunities

the modern country provides

despite being forced to leave his old life behind.

(Speaks foreign language)

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