The Lewiston Glacial Impact Crater

Glacial impact craters are a land form that I have identified and which are formed when a glacier presses up against a large land mass such as a moraine or escarpment. When the glacier melts, the top of the mountain of ice is colder than the bottom and thus melts more slowly.

The glacier thus becomes top heavy and a slab of ice, which may weigh millions of tons, breaks loose and slides off the top of the glacier. When it strikes the land mass below, it leaves a permanent impact crater. I am convinced that this can explain many features of lands that were once covered by glaciers.

I have identified another such crater in Lewiston, NY. This crater is just above the escarpment and was formed when the thinner layer if ice above the escarpment melted faster than the thicker layer north of the escarpment. A massive slab of ice broke free and slid off, striking the ground.

It's crater can be seen as the valley in Lewiston Road south of the intersection with Military Road. The crater extends across the golf course and is seen on Military Rd. just north of St. Mary's Hospital. Although it is not as pronounced there as on Lewiston Rd. This is a relatively limited crater in comparison with my two in Niagara Falls. I found no evidence that this crater continued on the Canadian side.

One reason that this Lewiston Crater is nowhere near the scope of the ones in Niagara Falls is simply that not far below the ground here is solid rock. This can be seen in the channel that carries water from the power reservoir to the generating plant as seen along Military Rd. While the slabs of ice that created the craters in Niagara Falls were falling on the relatively soft ground of the Niagara Falls Moraine. But we can only imagine how the earth must have trembled on the day that this crater was formed in Lewiston.