You wouldn't find it just by walking in the woods.

You have to want to go there because it is not easy to find.

And people who know about it walk down and go to see it and people who don't know about

it have no idea that it's there.

It is a giant abandoned dam.

It's 30 feet tall and 900 feet wide and made from huge stone boulders.

And the story of how it came to be here is the story of an American tycoon and his quest

to go back in time.

I'm Dylan Therese and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible,

and wondrous places.

And we're taking you to a place in Sudbury, Massachusetts where America's champion of

industry failed to triumph over nature, a place that's been given the glorious nickname

Ford's Folly.

More after this.

It's July of 1923.

A car pulls up outside of an old tavern in Sudbury, Massachusetts, outside of Boston.

This place is called the Wayside Inn.

It's a local landmark.

It was a hotspot during the American Revolution.

And then later the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a book about it.

In 1923, though, the inn is kind of falling apart.

To raise money for renovations, some locals write letters to prominent businessmen around

...