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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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
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TSA expands use of ‘Explosive Trace Detection’ technology

February 19, 2010 Todd DeFeo
ATLANTA — The Transportation Security Administration is increasing the use of Explosive Trace Detection (ETD) technology at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and a number of other airports nationwide. “Explosive Trace Detection technology is a critical tool in our ability to stay ahead of evolving threats to aviation security,” TSA Acting Administrator Gale Rossides said in a statement. “Expanding the use of this technology at checkpoints and at departure gates greatly enhances security to keep the traveling
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Seeing America

Remembering Gen. James B. McPherson

February 16, 2010 Todd DeFeo
ATLANTA — Interstate 20 roars in the background, but McPherson Avenue is otherwise a quiet road. It’s hard to imagine what this land was like 145 years ago — completely undeveloped and ravaged by war. Commercial and residential development has replaced trenches and battlefields over time, but at the intersection of McPherson and Monument avenues stands a reminder of the war that once raged here. On July 22, 1864, during the battle of Atlanta, Union Gen. James