Original subtitles

[narrator] A forgotten town in Oregon,

where locals fought an outlaw religious group for control.

They were accused of money laundering and prostitution.

It's all over the world.

[narrator] A wartime prison on the Great Plains,

where the government locked up perceived traitors.

It was a dark era in American history,

and it didn't make it into textbooks.

[narrator] And a battered building in Florida

at the heart of a unique industry.

[Drew] The time when different cultures were all very segregated,

it was a melting pot of people.

[narrator] Scattered across the United States

are abandoned structures and those who know their stories.

These forgotten ruins reveal the past of this land and its people.

These are the secrets of hidden America.

In the Pacific Northwest

lies a forgotten town that found itself

at the center of one of the most bizarre chapters in American history.

[John] My family's been here for generations,

and I love this beautiful country,

and it's a very quiet, mellow place to be, most of the time.

[Bell] This really is the middle of nowhere.

It feels like you could drive for miles without seeing another soul.

[Meigs] We're in Oregon's Central Plains.

It's a land of big ranches and small towns.

[narrator] In this arid landscape,

a leafy oasis stands out.

But beneath the green canopy,

abandoned structures tell a different story.

[Martin] It's almost like something strange happened here,

because it looks like

half the population picked up and left

while the other half stayed behind.

[Bell] There's an abandoned playground,

which, oh, sends chills down your spine.

It's obvious nobody's been playing here for decades.

[narrator] These quiet streets hide the secrets

of when a group of lawless radicals seized control.

The place was occupied, like a military force.

[Sherri] It's like something out of a movie.

It would seem so surreal to live in America

and have something like that going on on your own city streets.

[narrator] The events that unfolded in this remote town

gripped not only the people of Oregon,

but all of America.

John Silvertooth is one of the last remaining people

to have lived through this dark time.

[John] The history of the town is like a roller coaster.

Things change and they can change pretty fast.

[narrator] For years,

the residents of this small town led a peaceful life.

Until some new neighbors would land them

at the center of international news.

This is Antelope.

In 1981, a 64,000-acre ranch, called the Big Muddy,

was purchased by a group of people

who claimed to want to use it for agricultural purposes.

[narrator] No one could have predicted

that this would lead to a conflict so dramatic

it would scar the region forever.

It turned out that the purchasers of the ranch

were followers of an Indian mystic,

called Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

[soft Indian music playing]

He had a history in India of being a hypnotist.

He said he awoke and found himself to be God.

I guess he talked these other people into it.

They were recognizable by their red, orange, maroon and pink clothes,

and they were known as Rajneeshees named after their leader.

[John] Initially, people were just amused

more than anything else, or befuddled.

You know, it wasn't like "Oh, we've got to get rid of them.

[narrator] On the surface, this seemed like a small commune

centered around peace and love.

But the leadership was hiding some dark secrets.

[Meigs] Apparently, the Indian government

had started looking into some alleged tax irregularities.

[John] Got their money any way they could.

You know, a lot of people used to maintain

it was a, you know, international criminal organization.

[narrator] As more and more followers poured into the ranch,

it became clear

they had ambitions way beyond just farming this land.

What they wanted to do was,

you know, pretty clear violation of the land use laws.

[Bell] They built a dam.

They built an airport.

They even had its own electricity grid.

Imagine how that must have felt for the people of Antelope.

An entire city built just a few miles away from them,

almost overnight.

[narrator] By 1984, three years after settling in Oregon,

the commune was over 7,000 members strong,

and the leader himself had moved to the ranch.

[Bell] The Bhagwan had a taste for expensive things, particularly cars.

It said that at one point he owned a fleet of no less

than 93 Rolls-Royces.

[John] They would line up along the highway.

He would drive by real slow and they would all bow to him.

[narrator] But as the commune grew, they ran into a problem.

The state of Oregon had strict limitations

on what could be built on ranchland.

Their plans to build a city were shattered.

[John] They came in here, they'd started buying property

and moving people in.

They thought, "Well, if we can't have our own city,

we'll take this one."

[Bell] The locals wanted to stop the commune taking over.

There was a real risk that they could take over the city government

and end up having a say on things

like education in the local schools.

They came up with a drastic plan to disincorporate the town,

so there was no government to take over.

[narrator] But when the time came to vote on the matter,

it was already too late for the locals.

The people of Antelope were outnumbered, outvoted

and lost control of their own town.

[John] The first thing they did

was they named the town Rajneesh,

and they changed all the street names.

This place initially was the post office and the cafe,

and they turned the whole thing

into Zorba the Buddha. Rajneesh Cafe.

[narrator] Soon the people of Antelope's worst nightmare

would come true,

as Mayor Sherri Jamison knows well.

The Rajneeshees took control of the school system and the syllabus.

[Sherri] People were so opposed to what they considered to be

the indoctrination of their children,

that they pulled their kids out of this public school

and sent them elsewhere.

And it's that way to this day.

[narrator] But the commune's aspirations didn't end there.

In order to build their utopia, they hatched a plan

to embed their followers into the local government.

[Bell] With a council election coming up,

the commune leadership decided to try and get

some of their own people into office.

[narrator] And they were willing to do anything

to get their way, including acts of terrorism.

[narrator] In the 1980s, the Rajneeshees sect

was working on a plot to take full control of the town of Antelope.

They decided to start importing new voters,

and they went to cities around the US,

found homeless people and said,

"We'll move you to our community in Oregon.

We'll feed you. There is free love there."

[narrator] But the Rajneeshees knew

that just padding their numbers wouldn't be enough.

To sway the election,

they would also have to keep local voters away from the polls.

In September 1984,

they did something that would shock the world.

They got their hands on a solution of salmonella bacteria

and they started going to restaurants around the county

and pouring the bacteria into the salad bar.

The results were pretty staggering.

Seven hundred fifty-one people became infected with salmonella

and 45 of them wound up in the hospital.

Amazingly, no one died.

But they very easily could have.

it was the first and still to this day,

the largest bioterrorist attack in US history.

[narrator] Ultimately, all the efforts to sway the vote failed.

At the same time, the commune was unraveling from within,

with authorities hot on their trail.

In October 1985, the FBI descended on the ranch.

At the compound, they found glass vials

that tested positive for the salmonella

that had been found at the salad bar.

[narrator] But this was just the tip of the iceberg.

They had a whole series of plans

to assassinate various officials and other people.

[John] The attorney general told me I was on a list of people

that they wanted to take care of.

[narrator] In late 1985, the Bhagwan was deported from the US

on immigration fraud charges and moved back to India.

It was a great relief, of course, when the Rajneesh left.

It was like the war is over.

[narrator] Although the town got its name back in 1986,

for Antelope, the damage was already done.

[Sherri] When the Rajneesh were here, probably half the people left.

That takes a lot to make you leave your home.

[narrator] Today, four decades later,

the remaining residents of Antelope

are trying to put this dark chapter behind them.

Brandie McNamee is leading these efforts

by reopening the cafe as a store

and setting up an RV park next door.

We're doing this hard work now

because we want to see our kids have jobs here.

[narrator] Brandie is also working on getting

Dark Sky designation for Antelope,

which would put it on the map

as a top stargazing destination.

[Brandie] There's very few places in the world

where they can say they can see the Milky Way from Main Street.

And the hope is to have something new

that people know Antelope of

other than being the Rajneesh town.

[narrator] In northern Wyoming,

where the Rocky Mountains give way to the Great Plains,

lies a site where one government program

held thousands of innocent people.

[Michele] There's a striking mountain peak on the horizon

known as Heart Mountain.

It's the natural feature that gives this place its name.

But this is not a heartwarming story.

[Aura] I have a photo of myself at age two.

And so as long as I can remember,

I knew that something important happened here.

[narrator] The desolate landscape belies a surprising past.

[Sascha] It's hard to believe,

but at one time, 10,000 people lived here,

making it the third largest settlement

in the entire state of Wyoming.

[narrator] But after being inhabited for only three years,

it was suddenly deserted.

It's almost like when a carnival comes to town

and packs up and leaves

and just disappears, leaving an empty field behind.

[narrator] The remaining structures hold the secrets

of a little told chapter in American history.

[Michele] This is one of those moments in history

that, looking back, it's hard to believe that it ever even happened.

[narrator] The people held here endured great hardship

but also displayed great courage.

[Aura] They ended up becoming to this date

the most decorated military unit in US history.

[narrator] Aura Sunada Newlin is an anthropologist

who has a connection to this site that runs far deeper

than simple academic interest.

There's something really powerful about coming here to this site

where my grandmother's family kind of held it together

and made a life without falling apart.

[narrator] Before Aura's family arrived here

they had been living happily in America for 36 years.

But their lives were about to be turned upside down.

[Aura] They had to leave everything behind.

All they could bring with them was what they could carry.

So, you know, a couple of suitcases and you have to decide.

Am I going to bring clothing or am I going to bring family photos?

[narrator] One particular group of people was being targeted.

[Sascha] In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor

and the successful invasion of Pacific islands by Japanese military forces,

a lot of Americans in West Coast communities

started to express fears about Japanese American citizens in their midst.

[narrator] On February 19th, 1942

President Roosevelt reacted to this public hysteria

by ordering anyone of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast

to be rounded up and sent to so-called relocation centers

in the name of national security.

[Linda] Executive Order 9066 created military zones

in California, Washington and Oregon.

The government then forcibly removed Americans from their homes.

In total, around 120,000 people were affected by this order.

The government cited national security

as justification for this policy,

but it clearly violated some of the most essential

constitutional rights of Japanese Americans.

[narrator] This is one of ten large facilities

set up to house the entirety of the nation's Japanese American population

during World War II.

This is the Heart Mountain incarceration camp.

[Aura] It's astonishing to think

that instead of looking out on empty farmland,

[stammering] there was like a metropolis here.

[narrator] Only one original barrack remains

serving as an important window into the lives of the incarcerated families.

[Aura] The feel of the air in here,

the smell and the sounds is very palpable,

as kind of a full body experience.

These were designed as military barracks.

This entire space that we're in here right now,

would have actually been split into three separate units

holding three separate families.

[Sascha] They hung bedsheets to further subdivide the space and get privacy,

and they shoved newspapers into the cracks in the walls

to try to keep out the dust and the cold.

[narrator] Nine guard towers and barbed wire fences surround the camp.

But the people incarcerated here,

eked out an existence as close to normal as possible.

There were block representatives and councilmen.

It was run like its own city.

[Linda] There was a school for the children.

There was also a garment factory, a cabinet shop and a sawmill.

[narrator] Little remains of these buildings,

but below ground, one structure lives on as a testament

to the resilience of those confined here.

The food rations were so meager that the community here

turned to farming the land around them to alleviate their hunger.

This is one of the only remaining structures

of its kind, uh, in the country,

and I guess therefore in the world.

[narrator] This vast space was the camp's root cellar,

a natural refrigerator for produce farmed on site.

[Linda] The agriculture program

was so successful here

that not only was it able to sustain the population of Heart Mountain,

but also feed the other camps around the country.

They say that this root cellar stored 2.1 million pounds of food that first winter.

[Michele] When you look at the tough, arid land here,

it really speaks to their farming expertise.

[Aura] What started off as one of the greatest hardships at camp

turned out to be one of the greatest triumphs

that we have at Heart Mountain.

[narrator] But the war effort would soon directly affect Heart Mountain

through a new, equally shocking presidential mandate

leading to mass protests

and acts of heroism.

[bass drum playing]

[narrator] The Heart Mountain incarceration camp

was the temporary home for thousands

of Japanese American citizens during World War II.

But in January 1944, President Roosevelt

made an announcement that rocked life at the camp.

[Linda] Towards the end of the war, America needed more troops.

And in a surprising twist, the government turned

to the Japanese American men who were at this camp.

[Sascha] They had been judged to be enemies of the state,

their rights denied, their possessions seized.

And now they were being told that they would have to go fight

for the same country that had condemned them without trial.

[narrator] For a contingent here at Heart Mountain,

being drafted was too much to take.

[Michele] It was such an important point for many,

it was their breaking point,

their opportunity to say, "No, this is too much."

[Aura] I think most of them, it was on principle

saying, like, "I'm happy to serve in the US military.

I'm patriotic to my country, but not under these conditions."

[narrator] Heart Mountain became the site

of the largest single draft resistance movement in American history.

[Sascha] The military's attitude was uncompromising.

Sixty-three Heart Mountain residents

were prosecuted for resisting the draft

in what became the largest mass trial in the history of Wyoming.

The judge used a racial slur to sentence them all at once

to three years in federal prison.

[narrator] However, the draft protesters

were still in the minority at Heart Mountain.

At least 385 men incarcerated here would serve in the military

and prove to be a real asset to the nation's forces.

[Aura] My grandfather had volunteered.

I had a great uncle who was incarcerated at Heart Mountain

when he was drafted,

ultimately became something of a war hero.

Many of the men who'd been interned at Heart Mountain

received awards and honors for their service.

Two of them even received the Medal of Honor.

[Michele] Some Heart Mountain detainees were members

of one of the most decorated units in the US military,

the all Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

[narrator] After the war was won,

Heart Mountain Incarceration Camp shut down on November 10th, 1945.

[narrator] The people confined here were given a train ticket

and $25 to rebuild their shattered lives.

As for the remaining infrastructure at Heart Mountain,

the barracks were sold off for a dollar apiece

to anybody who could cart them away.

[Michele] There are still dozens of buildings

in the Wyoming-Montana area that have parts of the barracks in them.

So in a way, the camp still lives on.

[narrator] Since the end of the war

and the closure of the camp,

many influential Americans have sought to make amends

for the wartime imprisonment.

Two of them first met at Heart Mountain as children.

[Aura] Norm Mineta was incarcerated here at Heart Mountain.

And young Alan Simpson was living

just down the road in Cody, Wyoming.

And there was a Boy Scout troop here at Heart Mountain.

And this Boy Scout troop leader got together

with the Boy Scout troop leader in Cody

and they said, "You know what?

We should get our kids together."

The two became close friends and remained allies throughout

their successful political careers.

[narrator] In 1988, Norman Mineta and Alan Simpson

collaborated across party lines

to secure their most significant political victory,

the Civil Liberties Act.

The passage of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988 stated explicitly

that a grave injustice had been done to Japanese-American citizens.

That was a huge admission from the government.

[narrator] A new educational institute is currently being built here at Heart Mountain,

named after the senators.

[Aura] Really, this is a history of race in America.

And what fear and scapegoating can do

to a society in really painful ways.

We are reclaiming this history,

and I myself am incredibly proud

to educate the public about what happened here.

[narrator] On Florida's Gulf Coast

stands a building that catered

to a revolutionary industry and served as a sanctuary

for a budding criminal class.

It does feel surreal to be in this space.

To know that my ancestors built this.

Maybe I'm walking in their footsteps. I don't know.

We're in Ybor City, just northeast of downtown Tampa.

[Meigs] It's a really historic neighborhood built by immigrants.

People who came from all over the world

to work in an industry

that barely exists in the US today.

[narrator] A couple blocks away from the interstate,

a dilapidated structure sits abandoned.

You can see this building is kind of a wreck.

The concrete is breaking.

The rebar is exposed and rusting.

[narrator] But some clues point to a lively past.

Now this is one big open space.

But you can see from all of the different paint colors on the walls

that these used to be individual rooms.

[Drew] There are stories about the local Tampa Mafia

using this as a hideout,

as a place for the local mob bosses to gather.

It's not where you would go inside

unless you were maybe okay with some trouble.

[narrator] In Tampa, Florida,

few vestiges of the city's colorful beginnings remain.

But Kim Sheridan-Dugmore is determined

to keep her ancestor's dream alive.

There's lore in my family.

We've talked about this place since I can remember.

My grandmother would... would tell me stories,

and it was all about this place called Ybor.

[Linda] Ybor City's history goes back to the 1880s,

back when Tampa itself was just a tiny village.

[narrator] Drew Newman's family first came here to work

in the industry that built the city.

and they are still the owners

of the J. C. Newman Cigar Company.

Cigars are the only reason

that Tampa exists today the way it does.

And that's what created Tampa's identity.

[narrator] Ybor City was the vision of a refugee

escaping a brutal fate

as his adopted country fought for independence.

[Michele] Vicente de Ybor was a Spanish cigar maker,

who ran a manufacturing company in Havana, Cuba.

[Linda] Although he was Spanish,

Ybor supported Cuban independence

and he was even funding Cuban revolutionaries.

[Michele] This made him a target for Spanish authorities.

He heard about his imminent arrest.

So he decided to flee Cuba

and he headed to the United States.

[narrator] Looking for somewhere to rebuild his life and business,

one place stood out from the rest.

[Drew] Tampa's deepwater port was perfect for the steamships

coming from Havana laden with tobacco.

And it's the heat and humidity

that make our weather in the summer kind of miserable,

are perfect for cigars.

[narrator] Having found his El Dorado,

in 1885, Ybor embarked on a colossal mission.

[Michele] Cigar making was a specialized trade,

so Ybor wanted to bring skilled workers with him from Cuba.

They needed someplace to live, however. So he sought out some place

where he could essentially build a company town.

[Linda] Ybor didn't fund this city entirely alone.

He worked with fellow cigar makers

Serafin Sanchez and Ignacio Haya

to create everything that they needed.

[Kim] I'm proud of Seraphine Sanchez, my second great-grandfather.

It was a big vision,

and they really wanted to take care of their workers.

[Meigs] Along with Ybor,

Sanchez and Haya began to develop the community.

They built factories, stores and services,

and they built a lot of housing,

which they made available to workers

at 0% interest.

[narrator] But one major difference

would set this revolutionary town apart.

[Kim] They encouraged other cigar manufacturers

to join them,

and a lot of companies came,

and Tampa became the cigar center of the world.

[Drew] More cigars were rolled here in the city of Tampa

than anywhere else on the planet.

[narrator] Ybor City became more successful with time

and would soon get its crowning jewel.

In 1910,

the Regensburg cigar company

also moved in the neighborhood.

[Drew] They saw what was happening here in Tampa,

and they decided to build what at the time was

the largest cigar factory in the world,

known as El Reloj, or Spanish for clock.

The factory made a lot of headlines as it's being built,

and Sanchez and Haya saw this

and they bought the land

across the street from the factory.

[narrator] This is the Sanchez y Haya building.

This structure would serve the El Reloj factory

and Ybor City for years to come.

[Drew] This building was the center of the neighborhood.

The second floor was designed as a small hotel,

and the first floor was a cafe and a restaurant and a bar.

[Meigs] It was the first building in the area

to be made of reinforced concrete,

which is really smart in an area

that's often hit with hurricanes.

[narrator] Workers from all over the world

would flock to Ybor City,

but the South was a hostile place for immigrants.

To cater to the town's workforce,

the Sanchez y Haya building

would have to defy Florida's Jim Crow laws.

[Drew] The time when different people,

they were raised in different cultures

were all very segregated here in then Ybor City.

It was a melting pot

of people all living together in harmony,

all because they were making cigars together.

Ybor City was a town founded and populated

by almost only immigrants,

mainly from Cuba, Spain and Italy,

and it was thriving.

[narrator] As different cultures

brought together different ways of life,

the Sanchez y Haya building

would unintentionally harbor a growing underworld.

[Linda] The building was a social hub,

so it kind of stood to reason

that it would also become a center

for the town's less legal activities.

We have stories about how the police raided the building

because there was illegal bolita

being played downstairs.

[narrator] A numbers racket often run by the Mafia,

bolita was a game of chance

where numbered balls were withdrawn from a bag,

supposedly at random.

The problem was, bolita was never a fair game.

There were so many tricks

that the mob bosses put in order to rig the game.

For example, if you put your hand into the bag

and you were friends with a mob boss,

you'd pick out the ball that was cold,

the ball that had been put in the freezer.

Sometimes the ball that they wanted you to pick was heavy,

made out of lead.

[narrator] But it wasn't long

until sweeping national change

would bring the good times to a grinding halt.

[narrator] The Sanchez y Haya building in Ybor City

was the center of the cigar rolling community.

Yet new federal laws were about to drastically change life here.

In the 1920s, Prohibition hit,

forcing the Sanchez y Haya building to close its bar.

[narrator] It would be the city's criminal underworld

that would come to the rescue.

It wasn't long before they found a workaround

with the help of the local Mafia,

and opened their own speakeasy.

[Drew] So this building became the place

for the local mob bosses to gather.

This was the old alcohol storeroom.

This room was walled off on all four sides,

and kept hidden from the, uh, police.

We knew it was a place to store alcohol,

but it also might be used to store people who didn't pay their bills.

[narrator] For the next decade,

the Sanchez y Haya building

was teeming with thirsty patrons,

until a national crisis cast a dark shadow over Ybor City.

[Michele] In the 1930s,

the Depression hit and people could no longer afford luxuries like cigars.

So many people would turn

to a cheaper product like cigarettes,

or they would just kick the habit altogether.

[Linda] Many of the factories

had to lay off workers or even shut down completely.

And in a bid to save money,

a number of them went from hand rolled, specialized skilled labor

to mechanization.

[narrator] Just as life in Ybor City began to normalize,

a sudden shift in government diplomacy

would be another body blow

for the town's prized industry.

[Meigs] In 1962,

as a result of the rise of Fidel Castro's government,

the Communist takeover of Cuba,

the U.S. Government imposed an embargo

on products from Cuba,

that included the high quality Havana tobacco.

Many of the city's remaining cigar factories shut down,

and Ybor City's economy plummeted even further.

[narrator] While the El Reloj cigar factory was saved

when it was bought by Drew's great-grandfather J. C. Newman,

the Sanchez y Haya building wouldn't be so lucky.

[Drew] The hardest time in Tampa's cigar story

was really the 1970s and '80s.

Ybor City was a ghost town

and a lot of the history was lost.

When I was a little kid in the 1980s,

the building was boarded up, but it wasn't vacant.

It was the grungiest of dive bars.

[narrator] In the early 2000s,

the Sanchez y Haya building closed its doors for good.

Today, after many years of neglect,

Ybor City is undergoing a huge revitalization.

Drew Newman wants to make sure

the neighborhood cigar making history

is not forgotten.

At the factory across the street,

he's keeping its traditions alive.

[Drew] This is the last cigar factory

still rolling cigars not only in the city of Tampa,

but the last traditional cigar factory

operating in he United States.

[narrator] As for the Sanchez y Haya building,

the J.C. Newman Cigar Co.

has plans to bring it back to its roots.

My vision is that when you walk in the Sanchez y Haya building

in two years,

it's gonna look like it did 100 years ago.

The second floor is gonna be an inn.

The first floor is gonna be a cafe, a bar, a cigar lounge.

[Kim] It's very exciting to see

my family's building come back to life.

That brings such joy to me and my whole family.

[narrator] Thirty miles south of Philadelphia,

in the suburbs of the Garden State

lies an empty property

dubbed the strangest house in the world.

[Jeffrey] When I come here, I feel safe.

The ticket booth has always been a sanctuary.

I know a lot of people that could have gone south of hell

that they didn't have a place like this.

[Corina] We're at the Garden State,

home of the Jersey Devil

and some pretty bizarre places.

[Katherine] Just on the edge of the city,

there's a very odd structure

which looks almost like it's made of the earth itself.

[Kyle] At first glance, this eccentric collection of buildings

looks like a little fantasy land from a theme park.

[narrator] These structures hide the secrets

of a strange and mischievous creator.

Inside this has to be one of the most bizarre places in America.

Some people would say

that this place is made of reclaimed materials.

Other, less charitable people, might say

it looks like it's made of a pile of old junk.

[Corina] And when you go downstairs,

it looks like a dungeon.

There's tunnels.

What is going on down here?

[Kyle] Why is there a throne in the basement?

Is this some madman's castle

or the lair of a mystical beast

who's turned into a hoarder?

[narrator] This collection was brought together

by a master storyteller.

[Kyle] The man who built this place also built a web of lies

that would become his undoing.

[narrator] Artist Jeffrey Tirante

has been coming here his whole life

and has a close connection to the place.

[Jeffrey] This is where we would all come out, hang out.

We play guitar on the benches...

and what I like to do

with, uh, whenever I come out here is...

[bell dings]

...just to clean the vibrations up.

[bell dings]

[narrator] This project is almost a century in the making

and can trace its roots back to the Great Depression.

[Katherine] Thousands of people

lost their livelihoods during the Great Depression,

including one local character

responsible for these buildings,

George Daynor.

[Steven] I think George Daynor

was a very interesting character.

He told the stories to get the draw, to keep people coming.

[Kyle] According to Daynor, he made his fortune

during the Klondike gold rush, only to lose it all

in the stock market crash of 1929.

He took a gamble on buying some land

for $1 an acre,

but It turned out to be nothing more than a swamp.

[narrator] Daynor claimed to be inspired by a dream

to build a fantastic palace

from reclaimed junkyard materials.

He drained the swamp and landscaped the gardens.

It represented to him

his victory over the financial crash

that had crippled the American economy.

[narrator] This is the Palace of Depression.

[Katherine] Daynor opened his house to the public

for the first time on Christmas Day in 1932,

and it soon became a nationally known attraction.

[narrator] Daynor filled his palace

with trinkets and bizarre contraptions.

But he also built a network

of strange tunnels below ground,

something local resident Steven Medio has been investigating.

So we have interviewed a lot of different people

over the years who visited the palace.

While they were being given a tour by George,

he would disappear, and the next thing you know, he would pop up

beyond them or behind them.

You could travel across the property without being seen.

[narrator] Within this underground labyrinth,

Daynor created what he said

was the home of New Jersey's most infamous resident.

[Corina] The Palace of Depression is just down the road

from the New Jersey Pine Barrens,

where the legend of the Jersey Devil comes from.

[Kyle] The story goes that a local resident named Mother Leeds

cursed her 13th child, saying, "May the devil take this one."

Apparently, this cursed child grew bats' wings, hooves,

a goat's head, a forked tail

and flew off into the Pine Barrens.

[Kyle] In 1909, there was a spate of sightings,

with local newspapers reporting on encounters with the creature.

[Jeffrey] George created what was the Jersey Devil's den.

He would tell them that whenever the Jersey Devil

passed through Vineland, he would stay down

in the basement of the palace.

[narrator] Because of its creator's showmanship,

the palace was initially a huge success,

attracting over half a million visitors.

But one day, Daynor's love of public attention

would get him in serious trouble.

[Kyle] In 1956, one-month-old Peter Weinberger was kidnapped from his home

in Westbury, New York, while he was sleeping

in his stroller on his front porch.

[Katherine] Sensing an opportunity for some publicity,

Daynor broadcast the news

that the kidnappers were hiding out at the Palace of Depression

and were ready to negotiate with the FBI.

[Jeffrey] He had told these people

that a couple that acted suspicious with a kid

and wanted to know if they could split the ransom with him

in return for hiding out for a little while in his tunnels.

[narrator] Daynor's derailment of the investigation

would have terrible consequences.

Peter Weinberger would die

after being abandoned in the woods,

and his killer got the electric chair.

Daynor was sent to jail for two years,

leaving his palace abandoned.

People came out here and just started to rip and destroy the place.

[Katherine] Daynor died a pauper in 1964,

apparently 104 years old,

and his Palace of Depression fell into disrepair.

After a devastating fire, it was nearly completely razed

by the city of Vineland,

with only the old ticket booth left remaining.

[narrator] But from the ashes, a new palace would emerge.

Local building inspector Kevin Kirchner

would begin construction in 2002.

Kevin was a construction official for the city of Vineland,

and when it came across his desk,

he decided to go out

and take a look at the property

and see what was left.

[Jeffrey] He had all these wonderful memories

of growing up and coming out here

and I had the experience going through the original place,

having actually a pretty good idea of the original layout.

[narrator] But Kevin Kirchner unexpectedly passed away on Christmas Eve, 2021,

leaving the Palace of Depression's future in jeopardy.

Today, the palace is being repaired

and renovated by a number of enterprising locals.

[Katherine] Jeffrey Tirante and Steven Medio

have taken over the Palace of Depression

and are crowdfunding its restoration.

[Jeffrey] I mean, got all sorts of wonderful stories.

but to see a place that inspired you when you were a kid,

it's been an adventure from the start.