{"id":17099,"date":"2020-06-13T08:59:09","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T12:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=17099"},"modified":"2020-06-26T18:27:18","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T22:27:18","slug":"descending-into-purgatory-chasm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2020\/06\/13\/descending-into-purgatory-chasm\/","title":{"rendered":"Descending Into Purgatory Chasm"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article from Wonderland’s series about Miserable Places<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite Purgatory Chasm’s dismal-sounding name, most visitors have found the gorge stirring.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a most stupendous place,\u201d W.A. Benedict and H A. Tracey wrote of the chasm in their 1878 \u201cHistory of the town of Sutton, Massachusetts, from 1704 to 1876.\u201d<\/a> It \u201cfills the mind of the beholder with exalted ideas of the infinite power of the great Creator of all things, ‘who removeth the mountains and they know it not; who shakes the earth out of its place, and the pillars thereof tremble.'”<\/p>\n

Various theories about what formed the quarter-mile-long chasm in Sutton\u2014perhaps the movement of a techtonic plate fault, perhaps a damned-up water that rushed out of an ancient glacier, some devil or other. Regardless, the dramatic vistas have long attracted visitors.<\/p>\n