The Resurrection of Wayfarers Chapel
by Mark McDermott The telltale cracks began appearing last July. They began in the asphalt parking lot, but soon spread. Reverend Dan Burchett, the executive director of the Wayfarers Chapel, quickly came to understand the magnitude of what was unfolding. He’d begun as an officiant at the chapel in September 2000, and knew all too well the site is adjacent to the Portuguese Bend landslide area, which is among the most well-known geologic “slope failures” in the region, if not the nation. “It’s an eight-tenths of a mile geological site that is in every college textbook you can find as a famous land movement site,” Burchett said. Burchett and everyone else involved with the chapel had long been accustomed to living next to a landslide. They had thus far been spared catastrophe. The southernmost border of the property, closest to the Portuguese Bend slide area, was most impacted. Decades ago, they’d lost the Wayfarers Chapel visitors center due to land movement. But the chapel, now 73 years old, had remained unharmed. “We were far enough removed from it so that it was just very slow movement,” Burchett said. “It did not have an impact on the chapel itself. Every year, during our…
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