Articles by Todd DeFeo

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About Todd DeFeo
Todd DeFeo loves to travel anywhere, anytime, taking pictures and notes. An award-winning reporter, Todd revels in the experience and the fact that every place has a story to tell. He is the owner of The DeFeo Groupe and also edits Express Telegraph and Railfanning.org.
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Retracing Fess Parker’s steps in Georgia

March 18, 2010 Todd DeFeo
ATLANTA – Fess Parker, a long-time actor known for portraying famous historical figures turned California winemaker, died today. He was 85. Parker is perhaps best-remembered for playing both Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone on television shows based on the real life historical figures. But, one of his often-overlooked roles has a strong connection to Georgia. Parker portrayed James J. Andrews in Walt Disney’s 1956 movie “The Great Locomotive Chase.” The movie retells the story of
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Seeing America

Sherman slept here: Spending time in Uncle Billy’s boyhood home

March 14, 2010 Todd DeFeo
LANCASTER, Ohio — It’s hard to imagine a young William Tecumseh Sherman spending time in this room 180 years ago. The room — and the entire house for that matter — is simple and relatively unassuming, but it was here that the famous Civil War general, his brother — John Sherman, a Republican senator remembered for the Sherman Anti-Trust Act — and their nine brothers and sisters spent their formative years. Sherman’s father, Charles, built the four-room, wood-frame house in
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Seeing America

Tennessee’s Dunbar Cave

March 1, 2010 Todd DeFeo
By Todd DeFeo CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – By the 1930s and 1940s, Dunbar Cave was a popular destination. Not so much because of its natural splendor, but because of the musical acts that performed at the cave entrance. Roy Acuff, who eventually purchased the cave, was among the acts to bring his show to the area. The 8-mile-long Dunbar Cave was formed millions of years ago and has always attracted people. During digs at the site,
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The majestic scene and a ‘natural wonder’ of Georgia

February 23, 2010 Todd DeFeo
DAWSONVILLE, Ga. — As William Williamson was looking for suitable land he would claim during the Sixth Georgia Land Lottery, he stumbled upon a waterfall. Of the experience, he called the falls “perhaps the greatest in the World the most majestic Scene that I have ever witnessed or heard of,” according to ngeorgia.com. Amicalola Falls — derived from the Cherokee word for “tumbling waters” — is of the “Seven Natural Wonders of Georgia,” as identified
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Seeing America

The ‘Niagara of the South’

February 20, 2010 Todd DeFeo
TALLULAH FALLS, Ga. — Starting in the 1880s, Tallulah Gorge and the surrounding waterfalls gained notoriety as a tourist attraction. Hotels and related businesses soon sprang up in the area around the gorge, and the Tallulah Falls Railway shuttled tourists to see the two-mile-long, 1,000-foot tall gorge and the “Niagara of the South,” as the falls were known. In the 1880s, a tightrope walker named Professor Leon crossed the gorge — a publicity stunt for a nearby