&storyVar=Sinkholes and unstable soil characteristic of the karstland around Bluefields long plagued construction of the Beale Pike between Breezewood and Roanoke Park. The route was selected for its distance from the Bottomless Pit and the perceived need to allow a generous margin of safety mandated not by necessity but by the psychology of the people in this region, whose conceptions of the Pit and its supposed hazards are not easily dispelled by the best scientific testimony. Engineers supervised the drilling of test holes designed to detect unstable areas in a 30 foot grid extending 200 feet on either side of the intended highway's shoulders. Workers pulled up core samples revealing a subsoil of finely compacted kaolin silica and gabbro. 200 foot piles of steel-reinforced concrete supported by native soil friction were sunk to anchor highway margins against a substrate judged to be sandy and suffering from lack of compaction. The soil problems were not considered serious. No subsidence incidents of any importance were reported in the first 58 days of construction. The 59th day began unseasonably warm and cloudless. Towards mid morning highway workers began hearing sounds like distant gunfire detonations or firecrackers. Several strong bursts each a cluster of reports lasting a few seconds occurred in the hour before noon. Not all workers were able to hear the sounds which some ascribed to the backfire of pavement machinery. At 12:56 or 12:57 they felt the ground rocking beneath their feet. Those who could run to safety did. Behind them a great chasm opened in the earth. 73 workers and nearly four million dollars worth of government equipment disappeared into a cavity of unknown depth. The state brought in geologist Nelson Playfair who had experience with deep wells. Playfair's attempts to measure the depth of the Pit by triangulation failed owing to poor visibility at the lower levels. The Pit is not an isolated phenomenon. It is only an extreme case of what has been happening all along in this region where integration of geologic layers has become compromised. The forces that maintain the Pit remain a puzzle to geologists. The soil in the entire area is sandy friable and loose. Playfair explained: You're really not on solid ground anywhere in this region. The Pit's early history is sketchy. In the nineteenth century Chandler Moody described as a sign painter inventor libertine and atheist collected all that had been written about the Pit. An heir of Moody's established the New Lebanon Historical Society which preserved maps newspapers books paintings relating not only to the Pit (which was much smaller and shallower at that time) but to the entire region and its people. Among the items on display was Church's famous unfinished painting of the Bottomless Pit. Moody complained that maps of the Pit are of limited and at best temporary value. Walls and ledges are subject to sudden settling rearrangement and complete disappearance. The Historical Society was long housed in Hoar House the first substantial dwelling built in the area; and unfortunately Hoar House was pulled apart in the ground stress accompanying the 1993 subsidence its timbers and foundation stones being scattered in the characteristic rhomboid pattern. The debris was pulled into the Pit during a relatively minor subsidence event the following night. A number of residents attested to the former existence of books and clippings in the Society library alluding to earlier similar events in the past; i.e. to incidents in which all or nearly all existing records of the Bottomless Pit's history were effaced by its own unpredictable expansion. The lost records were themselves reputed to have contained accounts of similar catastrophes and irretrievable losses of history in past times yet more remote. Government psychologists have noted the self-validating elements of these stories. At least one of the persons making these claims was judged by a psychologist to be a woman capable [of] doing or saying anything in order to draw attention to herself and her emotional problems. Daring men have attempted to attain great depths in the Pit. Kellogg the astronomer, described as being in an erratic mental state after having quarreled with a colleague with whom he shared a house, descended to the 14,000 foot level, where he believed that he would be able to view extra-galactic nebulae at midday. Kellogg claimed in the caption of a once-popular lithograph that that stars were visible during the daytime when viewed from the bottom of deep wells or chimneys. The fact is that Kellogg was unable to see anything below 22000 feet, even his own lamp held inches from his eyes. Visibility in the Pit is a complex matter. Haze and shadow permit little visibility below the 4 mile depth. Dense fogs have been reported at lower levels. At still lower depths air pressure creates mirages. Other reported mirages may be psychological in nature. Much depends on angle of the sun and atmospheric conditions. Kellogg was the first to describe many famed optical phenomena of the Pit. Weather permitting a viewer standing at the Pit's rim at sunrise or sunset may see weird shadows cast on a bank of fog miles away haloed by a prismatic effect of light producing a famous illusion of Our Lady. Kellogg described the odd lights seen on moonless nights, locally supposed to be the spirits of brigands or lost men. A theme of Kellogg's writing was that the Pit was related to the Pit of Conklin or more often the Well of Conklin, a subject of local legend held to contain malign influences lethal to travelers. Others believe this pit was only a well poisoned out of spite by a man named Conklin, over disappointment in a legal matter. Kellogg wrote articles for such popular publications as Enigma Strange and Libido. He suggested the Pit to be the lair of vortices and fantastic beings whose description varied with his reading popular tastes and motion pictures and television programs he had seen. In 1962 Kellogg perished when an ambitious two-man winch broke at the 54,000 foot level sending his gondola tumbling downward. Thermal expansion of chain and an unusual ratchet mechanism for drawing out the chain were blamed for the accident. The Pit has become an integral part of life in the region. Children are told to behave lest Father Christmas throw them into the Pit. Children and to some extent the adults of the area are subject to recurring dreams and nightmares about the Pit. Dreams of falling into the Pit are common. Often in the dream the Pit is ever widening and threatens the dreamer's home and familiar surroundings. In another locally common class of dream the dreamer finds him or herself already in the Pit and unable to scale its walls. Feelings of anxiety despair fear abandonment and anomie are frequently reported. Even when dream content is not manifestly about the Pit residents dream of falling off cliffs or being stranded in crevices. The Pit was long popular with church groups. Chartered buses brought church members who proof of the literal reality of Hell. Some brought telescopes and cameras and many have reported success in viewing hell fires or demonic beings. More often they fail (as have geologists with more sophisticated equipment) to see any evidence of a fiery inner layer. For many years Miltown Evangelical Church presented a passion play at a pavilion on the south rim. Sermons invoked the Pit as an allegory. The performance began with a costumed angel trumpeting followed by the meteoric appearance of a magnesium flare star that fell from the sky into the Pit remaining visible up to 4 minutes. The Pit was symbolically opened with a golden key. There issued great billows of smoke and a plague of locusts enacted by the release of 600 horned lizards caged in concealed locations on the perimeter of the Pit. The play's elaborate costumes and sets were made by local people. Families rehearsed many months for a short season in midsummer. A lawsuit brought by the family of a woman who fell into the Pit while trying to get a better view brought an end to the production. The Pit remains an attraction to travelers. Devil's boiling pots are a natural formation as are calcite spars sold at roadside stands as devil horns or Satan's jewel boxes. Locusts sold in bamboo cages as souvenirs are actually the local 17-year cicada. Compasses and dip needles act erratically near the Pit. Normally reliable water witches fail. Tame animals turn hostile. It has been reported that dogs refuse to approach the Pit or act strangely in its vicinity. A common behavior is to hunker down and crawl across the ground propelled by the hind legs while emitting low gurgling sounds. Flocks of birds are sometimes observed flying down into the Pit. The flocking behavior may be an instinct triggered by the absence of a ground sense. Nests have been found down to 3,340 feet. Near the so-called nidificatory limit nests become disorganized irregular composed of bizarre elements (wire debris pebbles hard candy chewing gum religious tracts). Fleas have been found down to the 18,000 foot level. A blind midge first discovered in the Pit (Cinea horribilis) has since been found in stagnant waste pools from the brewing industry worldwide. It has become popular to throw small or valueless objects into the Pit. People talk of casting something into the Pit when they mean to get rid of it with certainty. Metaphor has become reality: People literally cast into the Pit last packs of cigarettes photographs of ex-husbands images of the disgraced bad cars marriage certificates household junk. One commercial enterprise throws unwanted objects into the Pit for a fee. An expedition to the ledge on the southeast rim found its bottom lined with a layer of coins smooth stones beverage containers fast food wrappers, and feral cats. It is such a frequent practice to throw unwanted kittens in the Pit that an animal rights group patrols the perimeter on a selective basis. At least 23 people have attempted suicide by jumping into the Pit and all but one have succeeded. Confusing the matter is a reported tendency to jump involuntarily into the Pit. It is possible to lose all sense of direction in the vicinity of the Pit for obscure reasons that are under investigation. One individual questioned by police reported the illusion of transposing the sky and the Pit. Thus some suicides may have been the result of reflex actions hallucinations or magnetic anomalies while others are the consequence of depression grief and loss of emotional affect. Motel owners in the area have agreed to an informal system of psychological screening. The subsidence has devastated the local real estate market in an area extending far beyond that where measurable subsidence has occurred. Homeowners in this marginal zone find disaster coverage impossible to obtain or prohibitively priced or available only with exclusions for damage owing to further ground subsidence. Cracks in pavements sidewalks driveways breezeways patios and interior and exterior walls are a universal sight. Doors will not open or are impossible to shut. Windows shatter explosively. Makeshift repairs have made shantytowns of formerly fine neighborhoods. Authorities warn that areas once viewed as remote from the Pit are in fact slowly sliding inward. The few remaining residents of Carbondale sit isolated in their homes surrounded by houses their neighbors have long abandoned. At night the community is pitch black. Ground stress has snapped power lines water pipes sewer connections and television cables. Squatters are unaware of developments in the outside world; some show signs of derangement. When Carbondale resident Devon Little moved here, this neighborhood was considered to be a vast distance from the Pit. This was not considered to be a risky area. Like many residents Little sleeps in his car. His modest amenities (a satellite dish a construction crew's portable toilet and a microwave oven and cooler plugged into a portable generator) are steps away. I am comfortable living outside now. Little's home has been on the market for nearly two years finding few lookers and no buyers. One potential buyer backed out after discovering that the area had landslide problems. In an attempt to secure the house's foundation Little nailed plywood over the studs to form a cripple wall. Local handymen report a brisk trade in such work yet these very measures have been ineffective against major subsidence events in the past. Residents are moody and fearful about the future, yet there is also an element of denial. Mentions of the Pit are conspicuously absent from area real estate brochures and Chamber of Commerce publications. If the Pit is mentioned at all it is only via such circumlocutions as describing the general region as a geological wonderland. It is not uncommon to hear residents talk animatedly of potholes or sinkholes they saw on a vacation or business trip concluding with evident satisfaction that subsidence is a problem wherever you go in the world! We're actually luckier than a lot of people! Things could be much worse! A common theme of conversations is that the Pit is filling up and will eventually stabilize. Geologists deny any basis for this hope. A 3,000-room Indian casino was once planned for the Bottomless Pit's south rim. It was to have featured a spectacular glass ballroom cantilevered over the Pit. Guests would have viewed the glorious abyss opening beneath their feet according to promotional literature. Financing fell apart when it was discovered that an engineer had been tampering with survey markers in order to conceal progressive subsidence. The shift was less than one half of an inch according to documents filed with the Gaming Board but it was ominous nonetheless for it had occurred within a five-month period. A state engineer told the Board that such subsidence transmitted as a torque [force] to the glass floor could cause it to shatter unpredictably. The casino's backers responded with a plan to measure the deformation of the glass floor through sensors. In the event of dangerous stress alarms would sound and the projecting ballroom would be evacuated. The Building Safety Commission rejected this plan. Glass, though possessing a greater tensile strength than steel, does not undergo a plastic deformation and may fail without any warning of the magnitude contemplated [by the engineer] as the basis of a mass evacuation. A portion of the northeast corner of the casino lot has since fallen into the Pit. Test pilings for the projecting ballroom are still visible as is the construction firm's temporary office whose walls are now several inches out of plumb. Large cracks parallel to the Pit's rim have appeared in the ground where construction was to have begun and this pattern of ground deformation has preceded past subsidence events. The Pit has swallowed part of the safety rail system encircling the Pit's perimeter. In recent years the Pit has both widened and gotten alarmingly deeper.&spamVar=elongate radon crackpot mausoleum sassafras trend jetliner titular Valois arduous bombast Bellatrix taboo moneymaker offend panjandrum henbane psychotherapist reportorial IEEE judicial endomorphism Nicholas punch wiry woven beck Mackinac neutron exploration Kathleen alterman ferrous Heidelberg quadruple Inca gorse move dominate urbanite cabana exogenous glycerin mold twinkle craftsperson softball turtle cauldron Arlington morsel Brennan electrocardiograph hermitian retribution TV parliamentary rapacious RCA Morton hepatica snag hepatitis cash CUNY Jesse squid informative moneymake pharmaceutic congressional Chinatown mite equivocate ah audiovisual legible pitchblende calla sulfonamide John swag commodious ah sheriff Cameron propel normative Masonic progress landfill Roger diagram Rollins sacrosanct leap curvilinear pilferage Cerberus utopian purslane cotman Stanhope levee Rasmussen Acapulco bullish airmass ant algorithm Cushman therefrom discrepant showy acropolis Hitachi retinue penna difluoride armchair Nile Rico ravage paid rabbi shrugging anatomy gauleiter philanthropic corundum formulate operand cup gallberry pressure formatting Chomsky Elinor Bloch pear horseman cupric lion separate terrible Brisbane hereafter fogy gallus songful virtuoso diathermy petroleum tombstone erect Dietz screenplay depreciable epitaxial king sea silicon volatile impale Barnet schoolteacher mandrake Kampala tropopause combine alumna Icelandic corruptible Mouton forswear Zan dashboard Fogarty vocate compelling Mollie monarch contour creek adoptive complicate junketeer synapses scrooge caprice hatchway fresh retail lament eliminate patriarchal crawlspace Kuwait klaxon Johanson nuclear earthshaking covariate wrongful dogfish physiochemical edict registrable soliloquy escape Evans Kowalski know distant amiss Adelia Conway mayor impute convolute Henrietta successful semantic&done=1