The Glacier And The Escarpment

My postings concerning the natural history of the Niagara Falls area have thus far been limited to events in the relatively recent past. Most of the postings have described events since the end of the last ice age, a mere 12,000 years ago. Now, let's go back a half million years or so.

It is known that there have actually been more than twenty glaciers that have pushed their way southward during cold spells and retreated northward when the climate became warmer. One bulwark on the Niagara Frontier that has withstood the destructive force of these glaciers is the escarpment, which has been there for at least a couple of hundred million years.

However, I have reason to believe that the force of the glaciers has been gradually chipping away at the escarpment. If we drive northward from Lewiston, NY and head south on Military Rd., past St. Mary's Hospital and the power reservoir, this will become obvious.

From the top of the escarpment, the ground on which Military Rd. is built gradually gets higher and higher as we go southward. It is not until we are well into the Town of Niagara, maybe two miles from the top of the escarpment, that the ground reaches a high point. The ground is layers of solid rock as we can see in the channel from the power reservoir to the generating plant.

This tells me that the escarpment was once maybe 50% higher than it is now and that the glaciers have been gradually chipping away at it for the last half million years or so.