CapeCodToday Blog Chowder

The Most Dangerous Places In SE Massachusetts

Where you may be in greater than average Danger around here

Suicide Alley

A nasty stretch of Route 6 turns to 2 lanes- one East, one West. You're on a divided highway, but then cars start coming at you from the other lane. It's disconcerting. Suicide Alley runs 13 miles, from exit 9A in Dennis all the way to Orleans.

I don't think any other stretch of road has a worse reputation on Cape Cod, and no other ones have such an ominous nickname.

If someone from Cape Cod says "There was this terrible head-on accident..." someone else from Cape Cod will usually finish with "Suicide Alley?"

If other states have a Suicide Alley, they are not respected by Google. I saw no other Alley mentioned.

South Beach, Chatham

"Ahhhhh... nice beach here.... soft sand, warm water, clean air... think I'll take a swim. Oh, look! A seal! What's that shadow swimming next to him?"

Due to the cycle of the sea, seals began hanging out in large numbers off Chatham. After that, it becomes simple algebra.... sharks eat seals, seals hang out at Chatham, so therefore...

A great white shark goes 10-20 feet long, and can bite a human being in half. If he's not looking that closely or if he's really hungry, we look kind of like seals in the right (wrong) light.

The last fatal shark attack in the general area was off Mattapoisett in 1936, but sharks are more prevalent now than at any point locals can remember.

 Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant

It's actually a fairly nice part of the state... coastal, beachfront, in the pines. It's not melting down or anything, and any leaks presently are low-key. They have a lot of spent nuclear waste sitting around (in overloaded storage facilities), and they can't find anyone to take it off their hands.

However... the worst case scenario actually makes this the top risk in the general area. Imagine a massive accident there? With almost all winds imaginable, the radioactivity released could blanket Cape Cod.

At that point, Cape Cod becomes Cape Chernobyl. Farming would be viable in Sandwich in about 20,000 years.

The Wedge, Hyannis

The low-income area around the Cape Cod mall is notorious for violence, especially recently.

"The Wedge" aka "The Triangle" aka "Captains Quarters" is a hot spot in Hyannis.

If you wish to buy drugs from someone in a sh*tty house who might be involved in a shooting later, you can do worse than the Hyannis Triangle.

After the shooting of Todd Lampley, the police initiated a high-profile presence in the region. They also did their best to assure people that (and how) help can be provided.

It is known locally as "Brockton-by-the-sea."

Woods Hole/Naushon Island Current

Make a point of avoiding the channel between Woods Hole and Naushon Island (the northern-most of the Elizabeth Islands) where the current reaches as high as 7 knots (which is 8 mph). A knot = 1.15 mph.

You don't want to pilot a small boat there, and you certainly don't want to fall off of a larger boat. What's worse is that even if you live, you stand a chance of washing ashore in Onset (see below).

We'll get a few offshore areas in this survery. If you don't like what we have here, let me know in the Comments section.

PAVE PAWS, Bourne

PAVE PAWS is a United States Air Force Space Command radar system operated by Space Wing squadrons for missile warning and space surveillance.... and I pasted that right from Wikipedia, so go to them if you disagree.

People tend to bug out when there's a high powered radar installation nearby, as they fear the government pounding high-powered radar into their heads 24/7/365.

A mountain of studies have been conducted on PAVE PAWS. General studies have dismissed the threat of an elevated cancer risk (when they found elevated cancer rates near the Pilgrim Plant when I was a kid, they blamed it on smokers), although there does seem to be an elevated rate of Ewing's Sarcoma among those who live near the P Double.

Ewing's Sarcoma is a form of bone cancer that generally attacks the hips, ribs, arms and legs. It is most commonly found in male teenagers.

I should add that nothing is proven here, and it is nice to have an early-warning missile detection system in place.

Bourne/Sagamore Bridges, Rotaries

This is actually what I personally fear more than anything else on the Cape. I fear heights, and this is as high as it gets.

Off the top of my head (from a previous article), I know it's a 40 meter drop off the Bourne Bridge. You'd make the fall in 1.6 seconds, and smash into the water (or onto the bike path, although at that height there really isn't that much difference) at about 35 mph.

Even if you don't do a goodbye-cruel-world leap off the bridge (this section of either Route 6 or Route 28 is the real Suicide Alley), you can skid on ice, get hit by a drunk, maybe catch some air... the possibilities are limitless.

The bridges were built in 1935 or so, and they could probably use an overhaul or ten.

Make it over the Bourne Bridge... you hit a rotary. Rotaries are a dying form of Road Intersection that basically dares the driver to force their way into a traffic circle that looks like a mini-Daytona at times. The reason that the Rotary is dying as an art form is that a rotary is fretty pucking dangerous.

Mitt Romney gets unusual praise from this column for ridding Earth of that Sagamore Bridge rotary.

This just in... man jumps off Tobin bridge, suffers only minor inujuries.

Pollock Rip Channel, off Chatham

The reason they built the Cape Cod Canal was that it shortened the distance one had to sail from New York to Boston. It allowed sailors to not have to sail around Cape Cod.

The reason that people use Pollock Rip Channel is that it saves a sailor from having to sail around Nantucket.

The reason God made Pollock Rip Channel is that God- for reasons known only to him- wanted the Cape Cod Canal built.

Long known as a ship graveyard, Pollock Rip is an area of shifting sand that is always hungry and only eats boats. As recently as 1950, 8 fishermen died within sight of the lightship pictured here during a gale.

 Strong tidal currents flowing in and out of Nantucket Sound meet weather from the open ocean to generate conditions that range from merely disorienting to completely treacherous.

Shangri-La/Onset, Wareham

If Hyannis is "Brockton-by-the-sea," then Onset is "Coastal Lynn." I personally stretch this area out to include the run of crack motels on the Cranberry Highway.

Shootings, stabbings, drug-dealing, armed robberies gone wrong, beat-downs, stick-ups... Wareham has all of the benefits of small-town life.

Throw in a part-time police chief (Chief Robert Stanley of Wareham is also Chief Robert Stanley of North Andover), a ton of Section 8 folks, a genuinely rotten economy, and BOOM goes the dynamite.

Wareham recently kicked off Operation Safe Streets, a massive episode of enhanced policing. While results have been mixed, at least they're trying.

Horseshoe Shoals

A ship-smasher of a spot that also was a good reason to build the Cape Cod Canal, Horseshoe Shoals is an area of shallow ocean that helps give Nantucket Sound her nasty reputation.

Horseshoe Shoals is too low to sail safely at low and medium tides (half the day, landlubbers). Horseshoe Shoals doesn't look like it's that far from land, but looks is deceiving, man. You don't want to have to swim to Chatham, even during the Great White Shark off-season.

This is also the proposed setting for the Cape Wind project. A few score of turbines will only add to the difficulty of sailing through that region.

Massachusetts Military Reservation, Bourne

You'd think that, after the thousands of men with machine guns leave, a place wouldn't be dangerous anymore. But the MMR turned out to be the gift that keeps giving.

You don't explode stuff and shoot depleted uranium rounds without screwing up the groundwater, it seems. Explosive constituents leeched through the soil and into the groundwater.

They removed 25,000 tons of soil in hopes of stopping the contamination, but you can have the first (and middle, and last) vegetables grown from that region.

Pufferbellies, Hyannis

Cape Cod's rowdiest nightclub makes it to the list, topping out the infamous Port o' Call in Buzzards Bay.

Hey...sometimes, you want a beer, a bottle, and a peaceful hour to drink it in. Other times, you want a swirling 30 person Cape Verdean or White Trashean brawl with blades flashing and girls screaming. Pufferbellies is your one-stop shop for the latter.

It's even more fun in the summer, when the summer people and summer service staff drink together.

Mirant, Sandwich

 I like my fresh sea breeze to have a whiff of power plant in it. The shipping of oil up the Canal to fuel Mirant has resulted in a few spills, as well.

 Add your own "Most Dangerous Places on Cape Cod" below.