Purgatory Chasm is a quarter-mile cleft in the granite of Sutton, in the Blackstone Valley of central Massachusetts, its walls rising as high as 70 feet above a floor strewn with massive boulders. In places the passage narrows to cracks a little over a foot wide, with stone overhangs leaning out above the path. Huge granite blocks lie jammed together, and the spaces and ledges left between them make numerous small caves.
How it formed is still argued. The favourite explanation is a flood: about 14,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, meltwater held back by an ice dam burst loose and ripped out blocks of bedrock as it tore through. Others have pointed to movement along a fault, and the cave gazetteer Showcaves.com notes that whatever started it, the forms inside the gorge are generally tectonic. Sutton's 1878 town history, by W. A. Benedict and H. A. Tracey, preferred the Creator, calling it "a most stupendous place" that filled the beholder with exalted ideas of the power of one "who removeth the mountains."
The names lean the other way. Cliffs in the chasm have been called Devil's Pulpit and Lover's Leap, Fat Man's Misery is a narrow slot atop one ridge that people squeeze through for fun, and a small cave near the end has been carved with the words "Prepare To Meet Thy God." Beyond the chasm a brook runs out of a smaller gorge called Little Purgatory, tumbling down small falls as it winds through the woods.
The dramatic views drew visitors long before the state stepped in. Much of the land, including the chasm itself, was acquired from the Whitin Machine Works of neighbouring Whitinsville, and in 1919 the legislature made it the Purgatory Chasm State Reservation. It covers 100 acres today, run by the Department of Conservation and Recreation, with two miles of trails, picnic areas, a visitor centre, a playground and rock climbing by permit, and scenes from the 2015 film The Sea of Trees were shot here. The Chasm Trail itself picks its way among the boulders and closes to hikers in winter, when ice makes it hazardous.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
