Archeology proves that just below the surface there is always more than meets the eye. A dig at the site of the the once-renowned Cataract House Hotel in Niagara Falls, New York is no exception. In Secret Agents of the Underground Railroad, host Anthony Morgan follows an excavation at Heritage Park, a remarkable site in Niagara Falls that was home to the Cataract House, an upscale hotel that stood between 1825 and 1945.  Today, it looks like a regular park but in the past, it was the most important station of the Underground Railroad on the Niagara Frontier: a Black Resistance operation run by the hotel's staff and led by the hotel's head waiter John Morrison, who guided enslaved people to freedom in Canada.  In a revealing exploration of the hotel's hidden remains and the artifacts left behind, Morgan joins a team of archeologists and community leaders as they recover essential but forgotten history. Through an archaeological excavation of the site, we learn about the lives and operations of some of the Underground Railroad's greatest unsung heroes. Original air date: February 3, 2023.

From the Curio.ca streaming audio-visual collection.