Original subtitles

Abandoned structures hold the secrets

of America's past.

A national treasure once sailed the seas,

holding a mystery in its belly.

My grandfather once said

that "everyone would like to know the top speed,

but Uncle Joe Stalin,

he's not gonna find out."

A clifftop complex

that kept America at the cutting edge

of a global technological revolution.

It's the very root of what we all carry in our pockets today.

This is where it all began.

And a frozen neighborhood,

once a safe haven for thousands of Americans.

You could kind of work with people

and meet with people

and experience people in an environment

that was nonjudgmental of who you were.

Scattered across the United States

are abandoned structures,

forgotten ruins of the past,

monuments to a bygone era.

Each shines a light on the story of this land

and its people.

These are the secrets of hidden America.

In Philadelphia,

a pinnacle of American engineering

rusts in the Delaware River.

A lot of these piers have really fallen into disuse.

But at one pier, you see this massive ship.

It's not a cargo ship.

It's sleek and trim.

It's a passenger vessel.

But it is in really poor shape.

On board is a labyrinth of corridors and hatches.

Inside is peeling paint,

dead wires dangling from the ceiling.

There are no distinguishing features to orientate yourself.

Everything has been removed, including the interior walls.

This vessel is a diamond in the rough.

It may be rusting,

but beneath that grime is an amazing story.

This ship was once the most famous passenger liner in America.

But few knew what was going on below deck.

These were top-drawer national secrets,

highly classified by the Pentagon

and they weren't released to the public for decades.

The stories of this vessel

have passed through the generations of one family.

Susan Gibbs is the granddaughter of the man who built it.

The first time I came on board the ship,

I was haunted a bit.

It's seemed like everyone had forgotten about the ship.

Today, the ship floats by the pier,

unnoticed by most.

But 50 years ago, it was the most luxurious

American ocean liner on the seas,

featuring a swimming pool,

two bars,

two theaters

and a place for the rich and famous to party.

We are entering the grand ballroom.

You can imagine women in gowns and stoles and...

men in their dapper tuxedos

and listening to the music,

which would have been over there.

It just would've been so magical.

The ship played host

to all sorts of celebrities of the day.

Salvador Dali,

Duke Ellington,

the Kennedys,

even John Wayne.

This is the SS United States,

a 50,000-ton steamship,

the most sophisticated high-tech vessel of its day.

It was an absolute masterpiece of marine architecture.

And it integrated all of the latest technologies

that could make a ship sleek and fast and elegant.

If you look closer at the chimney stacks,

you can see they have a very unusual design.

These are pointed almost like an aircraft's wing,

but on its side.

It's one of the many quirks of this vessel.

The stacks are part of a number of innovative design choices

from the mind of one man from Pennsylvania,

a man called William Francis Gibbs.

My grandfather was obsessed with ships since childhood.

And even when he went on to Harvard,

uh, to study,

he would spend a lot of his time in his dorm room

designing ships and neglecting his formal studies.

When he was still a student,

Gibbs drew the design for what would become

the SS United States.

He called it his "perfect ship."

But two world wars saw those plans put in a drawer.

By 1940,

Gibbs owned his own ship building business.

He took an order that would have

a profound influence on him for the rest of his life.

He was tasked with building the nation's Liberty ships.

The Liberty ships provided that vital lifeline of supplies

that kept Britain alive until the US could come in and help

turn the tide of the war.

The Liberty ships were one of the great engineering success stories

of the second world war.

Factories could churn out a 7,000-ton vessel

in just six weeks.

At the close of the second world war,

Gibbs had produced over 5,000 warships.

But his perfect vessel was still on the drawing board.

In 1949,

he shook hands on a deal to bring his dream to life.

Gibbs wanted to go back to building

the beautiful fast passenger liners

that he had built before the war.

And he knew now he might get his chance to build his ultimate ship,

his dream ship.

In 1950,

his company started building the SS United States

to the design he drew decades before,

but with a few changes.

There is no wood anywhere on this ship

because wood can burn,

wood can set on fire,

and my grandfather absolutely forbade that.

This ship was going to be totally safe.

During the wars,

Gibbs had learned that more sailors were lost to fire

than to drowning.

The only wood allowed on the ship

was the cutting board in the kitchen

and the Steinway piano in the ballroom.

He was obsessed with safety.

He liked to say of the SS United States,

"You can't set her on fire. You can't sink her.

You can't catch her."

But the biggest changes to the design

were below deck,

made to appease the ship's benefactor,

the US Government.

The SS United States

was the realization of a dream

for architect William Francis Gibbs.

Passengers on deck could indulge

in the fruits of postwar prosperity.

But hidden below was the beating heart of a warship.

Gibbs' idea was

the government would help him fund this super-fast ship

for use as a luxury passenger liner.

But it would also have a dual use.

In an emergency, in a war, it can be converted

into the fastest troopship ever known.

The ship's powerplant was, you know,

the heart and soul of the vessel.

This ship could go so fast.

The goal was to outrun enemy torpedoes.

And, basically, the ship could be converted

into a troopship in only a matter of days.

Gibbs also changed his design to accommodate

an advanced series of watertight compartments.

Each could be sealed in the event of a breach,

ensuring a single torpedo couldn't sink the vessel.

There were just these elaborate mechanisms,

where from the bridge

and from various points of the ship,

you could control the watertight doors throughout the vessel.

So that if there was ever a breach,

a fire or water,

it could be quickly localized.

On July 3rd, 1952,

the ship set sail on its maiden voyage

and crossing from New York Harbor to Great Britain.

The SS United States was designed

to be the fastest passenger ship ever built.

So he actually tested models of the ship in a wind tunnel

to design a structure that would be as aerodynamic as possible.

This was the first time this has ever been done for a ship.

Gibbs promised his ship would be the fastest on the sea,

putting his reputation on the line.

The maiden voyage of the SS United States

was extraordinary.

So I hear. I was not on board.

Many passengers stayed up all night

the night that the record was broken,

drinking and dancing up and down this deck

where I'm sitting now.

And conga lines, drinking out of the bottle,

I mean, just incredible festivities.

My grandfather was not-- he was on board,

but he was not in the conga line.

He was up on the bridge with the captain

and with some other dignitaries.

And he was so proud.

On July 7th,

the SS United States completed its journey

nearly half a day ahead of schedule.

The ship went from the US to Great Britain

in three days and ten hours.

It shattered previous records,

and amazingly,

that record still stands today.

He told a reporter,

"I've dreamed of this moment for 40 years."

And I think it was the high point of his entire life.

But the age of the cruise liner was coming to an end.

Boeing and the Douglas Aircraft Company

had made transatlantic travel cheap and fast.

The SS United States was decommissioned in 1969,

eventually ending up here in Philadelphia's Pier 82.

Today, the SS United States is the most visible legacy

of a man who transformed American seafaring.

William Francis Gibbs was one of the most

important engineers in American history

and, yet, his name is mostly forgotten today.

This ship was Gibbs' dream from a very young age.

And it took him the length of almost an entire career

as a ship builder

before he got a chance to see it come alive.

He was ultimately trying to create the perfect ship.

He used that phrase, "the perfect ship,"

a symbol connecting this country

with the rest of the world.

So, yes, I-- I think he accomplished his goal.

30 miles from the Great Lakes,

a former go-to destination was abandoned

when a new law transformed America.

So we're in Northern Michigan,

center of the Great Lakes,

a few miles from the border of Canada,

which means the winters get pretty cold.

There's a network of roads and various buildings.

But they're in some state of decay.

Hundreds of buildings lay empty.

One is larger than the rest.

One of the buildings is much larger than all the others.

It's painted this brilliant green color

and it's sitting beside the lake,

which is now frozen.

Vestiges of small-town America

mark where people used to gather.

Elsewhere, there's a small shop

that clearly closed some time ago.

Perhaps it was one of the last businesses left standing.

These buildings are what's left of a thriving community

that sought peace and prosperity.

But six decades ago,

a turning point in American history

drove the people away.

This land was once home to hundreds of people.

Blair Evans is part of a small community that remains.

We moved back here two years ago

and have been here full-time since.

But I've been involved in the community a lot for,

you know, my entire life.

Decades ago,

thousands of people would make the journey to Northern Michigan.

Most were drawn to one wooden building by the roadside.

This was a major hub of activity.

Day and night,

this area was just extraordinarily active.

This is the Flamingo Club,

a music hall for some of the biggest stars of the 1950s.

The Four Tops, Sam Cooke

and Sammy Davis Jr,

they all came to perform at Idlewild.

What Idlewild is is definitely a multifaceted question.

And, so, what Idlewild is, in the minds of people

who are familiar with the institution of Idlewild

and the myth of Idlewild,

is a kind of oasis.

There was hunting,

there was fishing,

there was boating,

there was swimming,

everything that people might wanna do

on an all-American vacation.

Tens of thousands of holiday-makers

flocked to this country resort in Northern Michigan.

To some, Idlewild went by another name.

They called it Black Eden.

In Michigan's northern woodlands

is a vacation resort like no other.

Blair Evans was just a boy

when famous musicians came to Idlewild.

Actually, there were a couple doors to, uh, kind of peek in,

depending on how knowledgeable you were of the operations.

There was also a door in the back.

Yeah, we had been known to sneak past

the first line of defense

and trying to take a peek and see what folks were doing.

But Idlewild was unique among resorts.

Since the 1930s,

if was one of the few safe havens for Black Americans,

even in the integrated north.

One thing about segregation in the South

is that it was mandated by law.

But in the north,

you had separation by custom,

by practice.

And so in the north,

Blacks and whites, for example,

would live in largely separate neighborhoods.

The children would go to separate schools.

What happened in reality

was that separate was rarely equal.

When Black Americans faced racism,

some entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to make money.

Idlewild was actually started by four white entrepreneurs.

They possibly had a moral purpose behind their enterprise,

but they also realized the potential to tap into the Black dollar.

Idlewild was probably the most popular vacation destination

for African-American families.

It is said that there would be 25,000 people here on a weekend,

which is just an absurd number of folks.

People from Chicago, Indianapolis,

Detroit, all those cities around,

would really come into the area.

So it was really huge during that time period.

I always wanted to go to Idlewild

to see what it looked like as a vacation spot,

as a resort, as a town.

I just wanted to see what the community looked and felt like.

But for some,

Idlewild was more than a summer retreat.

It became a place for Black business to thrive.

Herman and Lela Wilson were some of the first settlers.

They lived right across the street.

And that small garage you can see, right behind it,

is actually where their grocery store started.

The Wilsons sold holiday homes

and built the store to provide for the residents.

They started a small setup

in the little garage attached to their house

and really discovered that they were the need.

I mean, as far as groceries were concerned,

you could get pretty much everything you needed here.

But now, businesses like Wilson's

and the Flamingo Club are closed.

Rows of holiday homes are empty.

Guest numbers plummeted in the summer of 1964.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

was a high point of the Civil Rights movement

and it removed key barriers that African Americans faced.

So it meant greater mobility, access and opportunity.

What that does is it sets the table for Black folk

no longer wanting to just live in a Black community.

Now people were like, "No, we no longer need the safe haven

that this place once provided.

We feel empowered and embolden

to go to some of these white places now.

Black Americans flocked to vacation spots

all across the United States.

Idlewild's unique selling point had gone.

Everybody went and explored everything,

and that's perfectly understandable.

And Las Vegas started pulling a lot of acts.

Atlantic City started pulling a lot of acts.

They had access to capital

that entrepreneurs in Idlewild did not have.

By the end of the '60s,

Idlewild had only a fraction of the guests it once had.

The heady days as America's Black Eden were over.

We in America of African descent wear a mask.

We have two faces.

We have the face for White America that we put forward,

and we the face that we put forward

when we're within our tribe.

So at a place like Idlewild, you were with your tribe.

So you could let down your guard, you could be authentic

and you could have a deep sigh of relief.

For six decades,

people like Blair have kept the resort open,

keeping the flame lit at America's Black Eden.

There really is an amazing depth of self-reliance,

entrepreneurship, self-determination

that really emerged in this place

when it wasn't in other places.

And I think that can point us towards a lot of possibilities for the future,

in addition to understanding the past.

In Marin County,

just north of the Golden Gate Bridge,

is a site that helped usher in a new era

in the way America and the world communicated.

This is such a beautiful part of America

with the most amazing views of the Pacific Ocean.

Lots of people pass through this area,

maybe they're on a hike, they're going surfing,

but they're completely oblivious to the rich history of this site.

One feature of the landscape that is hard to ignore

is a collection of tall thin masts.

But there are other things here that are harder to spot.

Down near the coast,

there's this large abandoned-looking building

hidden amongst the trees.

Once upon a time,

it concealed a revolutionary machine.

In that far building,

it was truly Frankenstein stuff.

High-voltage, sparks,

and it sent an enormous bolt of electricity

through that antenna.

And it was called into action on a momentous day.

One of the most traumatic events in American history

has a direct link to this site.

But it's one that actually gets left out in history lessons.

On the Pacific Coast just north of San Francisco,

two large buildings stand at either end of a vast plot of land.

One is in serious disrepair.

The second one is a gorgeous white art deco-style building.

You can see the wires coming off the masts

and going into the white building.

So it's beginning to become clear

that this is some sort of radio communication site.

Written on one side is "RCA Communications Inc."

The Radio Corporation of America.

They built this communications hub between 1929 and 1931.

Inside, you've got these old machines

that are still working and humming away.

It's kind of this, you know, treasure trove

of old radio tech,

which is really cool.

But the story here begins in the fields to the northeast

with the few remaining pieces of a pioneering structure.

In the early teens of the last century,

nothing that we see behind us existed.

But they decided this was the spot

that they would build their radio station.

Richard Dillman, chief operator of today's station,

knows how to untangle the old from the new.

What we see here

is the base of one of the antenna masts

that were here in this field.

You see how big it was in diameter?

And it was 300 feet tall.

And it was just one of nine of these massive structures.

These giant towers with these concrete foundations

and they're huge and impressive,

but they're just there to support the cable,

which is actually how the messages are transmitted.

The company in charge of the site

was owned by one of the most celebrated scientists

of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

Guglielmo Marconi.

Marconi was an engineer, inventor and entrepreneur.

And eventual Nobel Prize-winning scientist.

One of his greatest contributions to science

was he discovered how to send and receive Morse code

without wires.

So this wireless technology was revolutionary.

And it paved the way

for all the technology that we see before us now.

The little devices that we now carry with us everywhere,

as a matter, of course, all have their roots

in the technology that was pioneered here at this site.

The original antennas at Bolinas

were erected by Marconi in 1914

with the purpose of sending Morse code messages

wirelessly across the Pacific.

But this site was part of something even bigger,

a global longwave radio network.

The plan was to have several high-powered stations

sort of girdle the world

and basically provide instantaneous communication

from like any point across the globe.

The antennas were just one piece of the puzzle.

It was only when they were hooked up to the building nearer the coast

that their full potential was realized.

This building today is in a sad state of disrepair.

Few people know it's here

and fewer still know what it was for.

But, in fact, it played a significant role

in Marconi's plan for global communications.

This building was the powerhouse

of the transmitting antennae that was outside.

To transmit signals

over the vast distances that Marconi wanted,

a huge amount of energy needed to be generated.

This is the beating heart of

the Marconi transoceanic transmitting system.

We're standing right here where this machinery was located.

And it was enormous, loud, dangerous,

high-voltage equipment.

Once the powerful primary signal had been produced,

it was then tuned before being sent along cables

to the antenna field,

where it would then be broadcast.

One of the main destinations for these communications

was another Marconi station on Hawaii.

Hawaii is a gateway radio communication

to the rest of the world.

So if you get to Hawaii, you can get everywhere else.

But just nine years into the life of

the Bolinas longwave radio station,

Marconi made a scientific breakthrough

that had major consequences.

In 1923,

he developed a shortwave beam system.

This had many advantages over the longwave system.

Shortwave was much more power efficient,

had far higher quality

and could travel much further distances.

The arrival of shortwave technology's

kind of the beginning of the end

for the original transmitting station.

It wasn't set up to take advantage of this new wave

that was coming through.

A newer station further inland was built,

leaving this one overshadowed.

The original transmitting station fell largely into disuse,

but it wasn't completely shut down.

The new technology, the shortwave technology

worked great but it was fickle.

The old technology was solid.

It was there all the time.

It might have been slow and it might have been expensive,

but it always got through.

And in 1941,

the trustworthy Bolinas Transmitting Station

stepped up when America was on the brink of catastrophe.

The Bolinas Transmitting Station

was a hotbed of pioneering radio work

throughout the early 20th century.

And in 1941,

the machines here were called upon

during one of America's most desperate times of need.

In the latter months of 1941,

it became apparent that

there might be a conflict in the Pacific

between America and the Empire of Japan.

On December 7th, at 12:48 p.m. in Washington,

General Marshall ordered the following message

to be sent to Hawaii immediately.

Marshall intended to send the message via the Army radio

but the shortwave transmission failed

due to atmospheric conditions.

The Army radio system was not up to the job.

But they knew that this antique technology

would get the message across.

And that's how the message was sent,

through this building to Hawaii.

They were in urgent need of a powerful longwave transmitter

and Bolinas stepped in to save the day.

The message arrived at 7:33 a.m., Honolulu time.

The attack began 22 minutes later.

But for some reason,

the message wasn't flagged as urgent

and wasn't decoded and delivered

to the Pacific Fleet HQ for another seven hours.

So it arrived on the deaths of Admiral Kimmel and General Short

as the Japanese planes were retreating towards their carriers.

And they did not get the message in time.

There's a great unanswered mystery.

The priority stamp was not put on that message.

More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack

and another 1,000 people were wounded.

But how much difference it would have made

if the message was read earlier is questionable.

Admiral Kimmel and General Short were under very strict orders

about what they could do in the way of preparation

to avoid the appearance of a panic on the island.

So how much of a change it would have made,

that's open to debate.

In the decades following World War II,

both building were refitted with newer transmitters

before finally ceasing operations in the 1970s.

The Bolinas site sat empty and neglected for years

until a group of radio enthusiasts began

breathing new life into the station in 1999.

And it remains operational today.

It's a ship-to-shore communication station now

and we're operating this station just as it always has.

Tradition is enormously important to us.

The original transmitting building

is now in the process of being restored

so more people can appreciate its little-known World War II story.

That building is the locus

of a very important element in communications history,

political history

and military history of the United States of America.

In the prairie state,

near the Mississippi River is an ancient wonder

hidden in plain sight.

We're just outside St. Louis

and it's calm, it's quiet,

it feels natural,

but, in reality, it's not natural at all.

Across this landscape,

mounds erupt from the ground.

When you start to look around

and see the sheer number of these mounds,

but also the shape,

it becomes clear that these were made by humans.

You get the sense that each one is hiding

some kind of secret about the site.

And that must mean that the biggest mound of them all

must hold the greatest secret of all.

Well, ahead of us,

we can see a large earthing structure

that was built by the American Indians here.

And it's the center of the site.

Dating back over 1,000 years,

this was once the focal point of an ancient civilization.

It was the largest prehistoric American Indian settlement north of Mexico.

But despite its significance,

many have never heard of this place.

There is a huge road

that runs right through the center of the site.

If somebody was driving down this road,

they probably wouldn't have any idea

that they were driving through

one of the most important sites in America.

Known as Monks Mound,

this vast man-made structure dominates the site.

Where we're standing is

the largest prehistoric earthwork in the Americas.

It's the largest holy earthing mound

built by ancient people in the Western Hemisphere.

Bill Iseminger spent 50 years

as the site's archaeologist and curator.

The base of it covers over 14 acres

and it stands 100 feet high,

has several different terraces.

We're standing on the first terrace.

So there's two levels up on top

and a smaller terrace off on the west side.

We look at our cities, including nearby St. Louis,

and we see tall buildings.

But, incredibly, this human-made structure

was the tallest structure in the United States

into the mid-19th century.

This lower terrace would've held a number of structures.

But a large building atop the mound was the focal point.

We found evidence of a huge building.

It was over 100 feet long, almost 50 feet wide

and maybe 30-40 feet tall, originally.

It probably had multiple functions.

But this was the seat of religious and political power and authority.

Built by a people known as the Mississippians,

this great mound was the heart of an ancient city,

Cahokia.

This culture existed largely between 800 and 1,500 AD.

But it's really 1,000 years ago

when the peak of this site actually was.

But while this may have been the seat of power,

archaeological finds elsewhere

reveal another side to this civilization.

The mounds weren't all necessarily meant to be built upon.

Some of them hide a darker secret.

The main site of Cahokia stretched across roughly 6 square miles.

Today, 80 of the original 120 mounds remain.

It's important to understand that there were no domesticated animals.

So everything from the digging to carrying the soil

to dropping it in different sites,

this was all done by people.

We've got a variety of artifacts

that are representative of Mississippian culture.

Um, one of the more notable ones is

this item we call a hoe.

Well, this is what they use to dig the dirt

to build these mounds.

For the last century,

excavations have been undertaken,

and slowly, they've revealed a picture

of this sophisticated hierarchical society.

So there's clues in everything we find,

even the soil itself.

The pollen grains in the soil will tell us something about the vegetation

and the kinds of plants that were around and growing,

the kinds of food they were eating.

And in garbage pits, we find a lot of the animal bone.

So we know that they were doing a lot of fishing.

Everything we find give us a little bit of more insights

into what daily life was like here at Cahokia.

As the site grew, so too did the population.

From around 1050 AD,

it went from just a couple of thousand inhabitants

to somewhere between 10 and 20,000 half a century later.

We're standing in the grand plaza right now

and we're at the southern end of it.

It covers almost 40 acres

and it would be used as a public gathering place.

So for ceremonies and rituals and games

and markets and other kinds of public activities.

At around 1,100 AD,

Cahokia would have been larger than London

and maybe even Paris.

You know, people don't often realize that we had

something that big here in America.

But while this city radiated power and authority,

by no means was it free from troubles.

We know from the digs around here

that there actually was a fence, so to speak,

that was about 2 miles in circumference

that surrounded the key central part of the city.

It also indicates that warfare and conflict

was a common part of Mississippian culture by this time.

And we see not just Cahokia,

but a lot of other Mississippian sites are being fortified as well.

Yet, while warring neighbors may have been

the greatest threat to the city's inhabitants

before the walls were built,

evidence found at the site points to the fact that,

for some, the dangers were closer to home.

There is suggestion that perhaps they practiced

human sacrifices,

because underneath some of the mounds

have been found victims of appalling injuries.

In the site named Mound 72,

a 1967 excavation revealed a possible burial of a leader

and the remains of numerous individuals

likely from the nearby area.

There was one pit that had 53 women in it,

all about 15 to 25 years old

and apparently have been sacrificed.

Next to them were four men

that had their heads and their hands cut off

apparently in some ritual.

It's really not been found at other places,

you know, throughout the Midwest

with that kind of burial treatment--

the mess, the sacrifices and everything.

So, something different was going on then.

But that's not typical of most Mississippian places.

Whatever these mass burials signified,

the greatest mystery remains.

Why did the population begin to disappear from around 1,200 AD?

There could have been a number of things

that contributed to its decline.

Perhaps political unrest,

drought, famine, disease.

The answers are out there.

But with archaeology, it's a long process.

The answers are literally in the ground.

They're there, but they must be discovered.

While many questions about Cahokia remain,

the site still offers up much to learn from.

Looking at lost cities

and declined civilizations like this

is powerful and resonant in the present

because it reminds us of the fragility

and vulnerability of our own cities,

our own settlements in the present day.

And perhaps that can provoke us

to take a bit more care with our environment

and safeguarding the future.