Albany Basins

According to Sweetser, "The Albany Basins are 12 miles from Bethel, and are reached by a good road which runs South 4 miles to Sanyo Pond, and thence down the glens of the Crooked River, through a sparsely populated and wild country. When about 3 miles from the Basins the road swings to the right into the hill-country, traverses dense overarching forests, passes Little Papoose Pond, and enters a remote and sequestered clearing. A foot-path leads from the farthest house, in about 4 miles, to the head of the Basins. The Albany-Basin House is a small inn where fishing tourists may stop. The Basins are on a tributary of the Crooked River, in a glen 500 - 600 ft. long, and consist of a series of immense pot-holes cut in the hard talcose rock. The cavities are partly filled with fragments of rock, and cavernous hollows are seen on the sides, overhung by projecting trees which arch and shade the ravine. The roar of the stream through the holes and among the water-worn rocks a audible far away. The largest of the cavities is 40 ft. deep and 120 ft. in circumference, and several others are nearly as large. The present stream seems incompetent to their excavation, and there is a plausible theory that at some early period a large river occupied this channel, forming whirlpools in which the attrition of loose and whirling blocks of granite wore out the bed-rocks below. A subsequent subsidence of the country to the N. diverted the stream into other channels and left the pot-holes exposed. The deep pools and rock-bound recesses along the brook are frequently visited by trout-fishers."