Coach Road Sinkhole
I'm not sure if this happened while we lived in Kingsbury or in Argyle. I think it was Kingsbury. I base that assumption on the fact that I would not see it on my way to work if I didn't live in Kingsbury. I would leave home and drive through the tiny village of Kingsbury crossing the highway and heading to Smith Basin where I cautiously crossed the bridge and headed for the Coach Road to take me into the Village of Argyle and then on to the factory.
It's difficult to see much in this photo. The school bus used to go down in here and pick up kids for school. This particular morning the bus had already gone through here which turned out to be a miracle. A short while afterwards a man in a pickup truck went down the hill onto this road. You will notice possibly a dark spot on the road that looks like a branch maybe?
He got a flat tire right about there. He stopped and discovered he didn't have a spare. He hiked out to find one and on his return he couldn't find his truck. What he did find was a huge mud puddle bigger than his truck. He walked to the nearest house to report his truck "stolen."
When the cops got there, they told him his truck wasn't stolen because there were no tracks of it beyond the mud puddle. He told them the mud puddle wasn't there then. There had been no rain and nobody knew how the puddle got there.
One of the cops stuck a branch into the puddle for some reason and it went down. They were amazed and got a bigger branch which disappeared down in the puddle. By then they realized they had a big problem.
The call went out and someone came and stuck a long metal pole in the hole. They couldn't find the bottom and it was still filled with water. I have no idea why they did this next but they called for divers to dive in the hole. They did this for at least a day, I think they tried again the next day but they could not find a bottom and there was no sign of the truck.
The next thing I saw was a news article in the paper saying the Governor had shut down the search because the hole was not a recognized body of water and they had no legal right to send state divers in there. They closed the Coach Road end of the road but I believe the other end was left open as people still lived there at the time. I don't know about today.
This whole area is built up on a deep basin left over possibly from the Ice Age. It gradually filled up with trees but the soil did not rise up very high. There are a lot of swampy areas both there and on the other side of the basin. When they built the Coach Road they followed an old track around the middle or belt of the "mountain" that was actually used by stage coaches.
Near this spot is or was when I drove through there another pipe coming out of the hillside with a huge iron tub to catch the natural spring water if that's what it is. It was at this spot where the coaches would stop to water the horses and the passengers.
That's a tiny image but I think I may be getting a bigger one back and will replace it then. This "kettle" was there a very long time when suddenly someone stole it. Another one was found someone and it replaced it. I think I have a photo somewhere of that one as well.
I found a few more and couldn't decide which so here they are.
Two in winter. The barrel was for people to put trash in instead of throwing it in the bushes like they often did.
I like that one but I think it was one of those polaroids.
So now its up to the viewer to decide which is the best one. I'm leaving them all.