Thanks for downloading this episode of Backstory, which explores myths in American history from

the root of the folk legend John Henry, to Robert E. Lee, The Man, and The Myth.

If you like the show, check out BackstoryRadio.org for more episodes.

Major funding for Backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment

for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation,

and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

From Virginia Humanities, this is Backstory.

Welcome to Backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines.

I'm Brian Ballot.

I'm Joe Antfremon.

I'm Nathan Connolly.

We're going to start today's show in California in 1936.

A young man was walking on a hillside above the San Francisco Bay.

And he stumbled across this piece of metal sticking out of the ground.

This is Peter Ham, the deputy director at UC Berkeley's Bankcroft Library.

He says the man who pulled the metal plate out of the dirt didn't think much of it.

He had a hole in the bottom of his car, and the plate with metal seemed about the right

size to cover the hole.

So it was only later, apparently, that he discovered that it had writing on it.

He took it to a historian at the Bankcroft Library named Herbert Bolton.

Bolton had been telling his students for years to keep their eyes out for a piece of metal

just like this.

...