Delving the Upton Beehive Chamber, Upton, MA

 I had heard about these ancient stone chambers located throughout New England from various sources, most notably the book Manitou by Mavor and Dix.  This one in Upton MA not far from Worcester is in a tiny park that's hard to find and had no parking.  I'm guessing it's more accessible in warmer weather. Here's what the town of Upton says about the park-

"Heritage Park

For decades, the stone cave or chamber at 18 Elm Street, near the eastern shore of Mill Pond, has intrigued and puzzled Upton residents and others who have studied its construction and possible origins.

Was it built by pre-Columbus European explorers? By Native Americans as a spiritual site? By early American farmers for agricultural purposes? By a 19th-century leather tanner? Each theory has its advocates.

The Upton Cave has been described as one of the largest and most perfectly built of more than 300 stone chambers found throughout the Northeast. A six-foot-high, fourteen-foot-long tunnel leads into a hillside, to a beehive-shaped domed chamber of quarried stone measuring about twelve feet across and eleven feet high. The cave is topped with several large oval stones believed to weigh several tons each.

As the exploration of its past continues, the future preservation of the cave seems assured. Upton residents voted to preserve the historic stone structure and its setting by acquiring the seven-acre property on Elm Street for a community park using Community Preservation Act funds."  (from uptonma.gov)

 Once you get into the park area, there's a lean-to with some visitor information posted and a map of the stone chamber, but no real explanation how to get there.  In the same clearing there is shed with a map posted on its side, and this map notes where the stone chamber is in relation to the other structures in the field.  It is no hike in, it's right there in the depression along the field, along the stone wall that runs in the depression.  The chamber abuts a residential property.  We crawled into the chamber entrance and along the wet bottomed entrance.  There were a few beams and logs that could be crawled along to get into the chamber without getting wet, but in the chamber itself there was a good 10" of standing water.  I got into the chamber on the one rock that wasn't submerged and took these shots of the sides, center, and top of the structure.  I definitely would like to return in the summer when it's dry.  There are supposedly places where light can come into the chamber but everything was snow covered.  Successful first New England Dungeon Delve.