Man and the Glacial Period

by G. Frederick Wright

The above estimates, setting such narrow limits to post-glacial time in America, will seem surprising only to those who have not carefully considered the glacial phenomena of various kinds to be observed all over the glaciated area. As already said, the glaciated portion of North America is a region of waterfalls, caused by the filling up of old channels with glacial débris, and the consequent diversion of the water-courses. By this means the streams in countless places have been forced to fall over precipices, and to begin anew their work of erosion. Waterfalls abound in the glaciated region because post-glacial time is so short. Give these streams time enough, and they will wear their way back to their sources, as the preglacial streams had done over the same area, and as similar streams have done outside the glaciated region. Upon close observation, it will be found that the waterfalls in America are nearly all post-glacial, and that their work of erosion has been confined to a very limited time. A fair example is to be seen at Elyria, Ohio, in the falls of Black River, one of the small streams which empty into Lake Erie from the south. Its post-glacial gorge, worn in sandstone which overlies soft shale, is only about two thousand feet in length, and it has as yet made no approach toward a V-shaped outlet.

The same impression of recent age is made by examining the outlets of almost any of the lakes which dot the glaciated area. The very reason of the continued existence of these lakes is that they have not had time enough to lower their outlets sufficiently to drain the water off, as has been done in all the unglaciated region. In many cases it is easy to see that the time during which this process of lowering the outlets has been going on cannot have been many thousand years.

The same impression is made upon studying the evidences of post-glacial valley erosion. Ordinary streams constantly enlarge their troughs by impinging against the banks now upon one side and now upon the other, and transporting the material towards the sea. It is estimated by Wallace that nine-tenths of the sedimentary material borne along by rivers is gathered from the immediate vicinity of its current, and goes to enlarge the trough of the stream. Upon measuring the cubical contents of many eroded troughs of streams in the glaciated region, and applying the tables giving the average amount of annual transportation of sediment by streams, we arrive at nearly the same results as by the study of the recession of post-glacial waterfalls.

Professor L. E. Hicks, of Granville, Ohio, has published the results of careful calculations made by him, concerning the valley of Raccoon Creek in Licking County, Ohio.[ED] These show that fifteen thousand years would be more than abundant time for the erosion of the immediate valley adjoining that small stream. I have made and published similar calculations concerning Plum Creek, at Oberlin, in Lorain County, Ohio.[EE] Like Raccoon Creek, this has its entire bed in glacial deposits, and has had nothing else to do since its birth but to enlarge its borders. The drainage basin of the creek covers an area of about twenty-five square miles. Its main trough averages about twenty feet in depth by five hundred in width, along a distance of about ten miles. From the rate at which the stream is transporting sediment, it is incredible that it could have been at work at this process more than ten thousand years without producing greater results.

[ED] See Baptist Quarterly for July. 1884.

[EE] See Ice Age in North America, p. 469.

Calculations based upon the amount of sediment deposited since the retreat of the ice-sheet point to a like moderate conclusion. When one looks upon the turbid water of a raging stream in time of flood, and considers that all the sediment borne along will soon settle down upon the bottom of the lake into which the stream empties, he can but feel surprised that the “wash” of the hills has not already filled up the depression of the lake. It certainly would have done so had the present condition of things existed for an indefinite period of time.

Naturally, while prosecuting the survey of the superficial geology of Minnesota, Mr. Upham was greatly impressed by the continued existence of the innumerable lakelets that give such a charm to the scenery of that State. Every day’s investigations added to the evidence that the lapse of time since the Ice age must have been comparatively brief, since, otherwise, the rains and streams would have filled these basins with sediment, and cut outlets low enough to drain them dry, for in many instances he could see such changes slowly going forward.[EF]

[EF] Minnesota Geological Report for 1879, p. 73.