Beehive Hut and Ye Old Cemetery

The website for the town of Danville tells the story of a stone chamber, rumored to exist somewhere within the town's woods, whose location had been lost for many years until being re-discovered by some youths playing in the area. It's called the Beehive Hut and is man-made but of unknown age and origin. Speculation as to its purpose range from the mundane to the outrageous, in that it's a root cellar built by early settlers to it being an archaeological sight dating back many hundreds of years prior to Columbus.

Once it was found again, steps were taken to not only keep it found but also preserve and share it with the community. Its location down a side road off Route 111A is freely given by the town, and once you've driven as far as you can down the dirt road, arrows point you to a trail.

From where we parked it was probably a quarter mile of very easy walking until we reached the chamber.

There were no bees inside the Beehive Hut, but that afternoon it could have been called the Mosquito Hut. Those pests were everywhere. They didn't stop me from scooting in and having a quick look around though.

I even coerced Tina to step inside the entrance and take a picture.

Then we were on our way back. Once you've walked around the top of the chamber and been inside there's not much else to see. Besides, less than a mile down the road we had passed a cemetery called Ye Old Cemetery which dated back to 1740. You can't just drive by something like that without stopping to look around.

This cemetery was old to the point that the earliest graves didn't even have headstones, just rocks placed uniformly in the first few rows. When we got to the actual headstones many were broken and illegible. But of the ones we could read, in addition to giving names and dates, many had messages inscribed into them. This one from a 19 year old man started off with the cheerful phrase "Deceitful world farewell to you."

Another headstone for a "Capt. (Reuben) Hook" gave us a chuckle. I wondered what kind of ribbing this fellow took in life, however I figured out later (to my disappointment) that he pre-dated the fictional Captain Hook character from Peter Pan.

Ye Old Cemetery concluded that day's trip to Danville and the Beehive Hut. But here's what's extra cool about this stone chamber, or stone chambers in general. There are literally dozens of them in the Northeast, similar to this one and scattered anywhere from New Hampshire to New York. And there's seemingly just as many opinions as to what purpose they served as there are chambers. Most of them aren't commemorated like they've done with this one, but with some scouring we believe we have several of them pinpointed, and one of these days we'll be taking a road trip to see just how many of these mysterious chambers we're able to find.