Secondary Glaciation And The Niagara Impact Craters

I would like to introduce a new branch of earth science that I have developed and which solves the puzzling landscape of the city of Niagara Falls, Canada. I have termed it "secondary glaciation", as opposed to primary glaciation.

SECONDARY GLACIATION

The effects of glaciers that is known already is primary glaciation. During an ice age, a glacier moving southward carves fearures in the land, such as the Finger Lakes of New York State. The glacier also carries large amounts of stone and dirt, which it leaves behind when it melts forming such glacial features as moraines, till and, kames. There are many textbooks on such primary glaciation.

In my work in natural history, I have featured glacial effects that I have never seen in any literature. These effects concern what happens when a glacier melts at the end of the ice age. Secondary glaciation involves three basic processes that have a lasting effect on the land.

First is the water from the melting glacier. During an ice age, a virtual ocean of water is transported to high ground where such an amount of water would not otherwise be. When the glacier melts, this vast amount of water flows back to lower ground and in doing so, has a great effect on the landscape that it crosses.

Second is glacial impact craters. As I have described in previous postings on this topic, when a glacier melts, it is warmer at the bottom of the glacier than at the top due to the simple fact that the air is warmer closer to the earth. This means that the bottom melts fastest and the glacier becomes top-heavy.

If the glacier is pressed up against a land mass, such as a large moraine or an escarpment, the ice is apt to fracture laterally so that a large slab of ice slides off the top and strikes the ground below. Such a slab may weigh millions of tons and may fall from a height of a kilometer or more so that it leaves a permanent valley or ridge in the ground below.

Third, is sliding glaciers. When the glacier melts and begins to break apart, a large piece of it may become lubricated by the water flowing beneath it and slide over slanted rock strata on which it lies. If it strikes any high ground in it's path, such as a moraine, it will leave a permanant indentation. Even if it does not, it will erode a path in the ground over which it moves which may later become a river or lake.

THE LANDSCAPE OF NIAGARA FALLS, CANADA

Now, let's take a look at the puzzling landscape of the city of Niagara Falls, Canada. This has nothing to do with the falls themselves, which are latecomers in the natural history and are easy to explain. If you would like a map connection go to http://www.maps.google.com/ and put in a search for "Niagara Falls".

In the southern tourist area of the city, you will notice that Stanley Ave. reaches a peak in elevation at it's intersection with Main St. Moving north along Main St., we see that it is actually a ridge that we are on as Allendale Ave. and Murray St. are much lower than Main St. where they intersect.

Google lists the street along the ridge as Main St. but it is also called Portage Rd. So, let's call this the "Portage Ridge".

Going northward on Main St., we can easily see that the streets get lower in each direction. Although it required going down a street such as Culp to see that we are on a low ridge. Main St./Portage Rd. reaches a high point at Lundy's Lane/Ferry St. and then decreases in elevation as we continue northward. If we turn westward on Lundy's Lane from Main St., we reach a peak, which is actually the highest point in the Niagara area just before the intersection with Drummond Rd. Let's call this "Mount Niagara".

If we continue westward on Lundy's Lane, it is easy to see by looking down side streets that we are on another ridge, which is much more well-defined than the Portage Ridge. This "Lundy's Lane Ridge" extends for quite some distance westward, at least to the power canal.

But this brings us to two puzzling mysteries. If you look at your map of the city, you can see Main St., which is built along the Portage Ridge, actually forms a semi-circle arc. If we continue the arc formed by Main St. on a map, it is easy to see that the arc formed by Valley Way from Stanley Ave. to Second Ave. is it's continuation so that we have essentially a 180 degree semi-circle formed. The difference is that the southwestern part of the arc, on which Main St. is built is a ridge, while the northeastern part of the arc, along which Valley Way is built, is a valley.

What on earth would cause an arc to form on the ground like this with half the arc a ridge and the other half a valley? Hasn't anyone been baffled by this other than me?

Now to the next mystery of Niagara Falls, Canada. Suppose one drives between two parallel roads in the city, Drummond Rd. and Dorchester Rd. Lundy's Lane and Thorold Stone Road are two parallel roads that run between Drummond and Dorchester Rds.

Lundy's Lane and Thorold Stone Rd. are only about 3 km apart. Yet the baffling thing is that on Lundy's Lane, you would start on a high point at Drummond Rd. and get lower as you went toward Dorchester Rd. While not far away, on Thorold Stone Rd., you would start low at Drummond Rd. and climb higher until reaching Dorchester Rd. How can we explain this?

The answer, of course, is the ridge upon which Lundy's Lane is built, even though both roads are built within the west side of the Niagara Valley, that we saw in the posting by that name on this blog. The ridge is so neat that it almost seems that it could be man-made. The usual slant to the ground is as it is on Thorold Stone Rd. This is actually the Niagara Valley that underlies the area of the falls. I discoveried this valley and described it in the posting on this blog by that name. The Lundy's Lane Ridge is what makes the elevation of Lundy's Lane between Drummond and Dorchester Rds. the opposite of Thorold Stone Rd.

What could possibly have formed the Lundy's Lane Ridge? These two mysteries are joined together. The Portage Ridge peaks where it meets the Lundy's Lane Ridge, forming "Mount Niagara" and does not continue south of this point. The other portion of the arc formed by the Portage Ridge, to the north of Lundy's Lane Ridge, actually forms the opposite of a ridge, a valley, namely Valley Way.

To answer these questions, let's first describe how this arc must have formed. On the American side, in the area of the falls, we see how the underlying strata of the rock slopes downward toward the falls. This slope also includes the upper rapids of the river just above the falls.

When the glacier began to melt, great masses of ice began to slide along this slope. This ice struck the Niagara Falls Moraine, the high ground on the Canadian side of tha falls and produced the indentation resulting in the bluffs above the falls, Queen Victoria Park and, Clifton Hill. We know that this must have been formed by some kind of impact because in other places, such as on Drummond Rd. and Ailanthus Ave. the high ground of the moraine lowers very gradually.

Another reason for believing that there must have been a great impact here is the "lip" formed at the top of the bluff. There is a significant drop in Dixon St. west of Stanley Ave. that would have had no reason to form if the bluffs above the falls were formed by another method, such as erosion by water. The Niagara Falls Moraine had earlier been deposited in the Niagara Valley.

On a map, it can be seen how glacial impact craters formed by great masses of ice sliding off this ice that had pressed up against the moraine around where the falls are now located and striking the ground with tremendous force. One such slab created the Portage Ridge and then another, from above where the upper rapids are now located, slid across the space where that slab had been and struck the earth, creating the Valley Way Crater.

These sliding glaciers reveal how the ridge upon which Lundy's Lane was formed. When the glacier began to melt and break apart, masses of ice slid down the west side of the Niagara Valley, around where Thorold Stone Rd. is now located. This vast amount of ice then began sliding southward, carving up the ground before it like a giant bulldozer.

As it got warmer, too much of the ice melted to push the load of ground any further and there it remains today. There is a dip in the road on Frederica St. just west of Drummond Rd. which shows where some of the meltwater flowed away.

This Lundy's Lane Ridge must have extended further east toward where the river is now. But then came the massive slabs of ice that formed the impact crater and the Portage Ridge. This slab of ice pushed back the dirt and stone forming the eastern portion of the Lundy's Lane Ridge and today it is piled up, creating the high point on Lundy's Lane just east of Drummond Rd. This is why Main St. reaches a peak at this intersection and gets lower in either direction.

Next comes another vast slab of ice, crossing over the area on the lower part of the glacier pressed up against the Niagara Falls Moraine and left vacant by the sliding of the first mass forming the first impact crater. This slab formed the Valley Way Impact Crater.

The reason that it formed a valley when the other had formed a ridge now becomes clear. The Valley Way area is to the north of the Lundy's Lane Ridge and so had already been "bulldozed" when this impact crater was formed. There was not enough loose dirt available to form a ridge and so, a valley was formed.

If the Portage Ridge was indeed formed by the impact of a vast slab of ice then, according to my hypothesis, is should have formed a culvert when the meltwaters of the slab would carve a channel in the ground while flowing away. Such a culvert in just the right place can be seen today in the wide dip on Fallsview Blvd. with a low point at Murray St. This culvert must have actually been the first falls at Niagara and flowed along what is now Murray St. just south of the Skylon Tower. There is no visible plunge pool at the bottom of the hill because it was flowing into the newly-forming Lake Tonawanda.

So that is my explanation of the landscape of Niagara Falls, Canada. The Lundy's Lane Ridge is much better defined that the Portage Ridge simply because it was fomed by a moving secondary glacier and not by an instantaneous impact crater. Lundy's Lane Ridge was formed by the same process as the bluffs above the falls and Queen Victoria Park and the similarity between the two can be readily seen.

This Lundy's Lane Ridge may be one of the best examples in the world of a "secondary glacial moraine". It could not possibly be a primary moraine because it would have been smoothed over by the primary glacier. Features created by secondary glaciation tend to be much more local than those created by primary glaciation. We can think of primary glaciation as a broad brush that paints over a surface and secondary glaciation as the finer brushes of artists that go back over the surface when the ice age ends.

DETAILS OF NIAGARA FALLS' TWO GLACIAL IMPACT CRATERS AND SUBSEQUENT WATER FLOW

A wide basin in which much of the city of Niagara Falls, Canada lies was formed around 12,000 years ago when the last glacier to cover the area was pressed up against the Niagara Falls Moraine, the high ground on the Canadian side by the falls. The glacier, a vast mountain of ice maybe a mile or more in height, fractured horizontally and a slab of ice weighing many millions of tons that had been the upper part of the glacier slid off and struck the ground with tremendous force.

The gradual side of the resulting impact crater closest to the glacier can easily be seen by driving westward on Kitchener Street from Victoria Ave. to Stanley Ave., which represents the bottom of the crater. If you keep driving westward on Kitchener St., you will climb the opposite side of the crater before reaching Portage Rd., roughly the edge of the crater.

The steep side of the crater can easily be seen today in the steep drop in Ferry St./Lundy's Lane just east of Sylvia Place, which is just east of Portage Rd. South of this drop was where the corner of the slab with the most force ended up as can be seen by the steep drops on Gray St. and Allendale St. perpendicular to the drop on Lundy's Lane/Ferry St.

The other impact crater that I have identified is not far from the first. From Victoria Ave. westward to Sixth Ave. there is a similar gradual slide from McRae St. downward to Valley Way and then a steep opposite side where the slab of ice came to a halt. The principle is similar to striking the soft ground with a golf club or sledge hammer at a low angle. The side of the resulting crater where the club hit the ground will be gradual and the opposite side, where it came to a halt, will be steep.

This crater could not have been carved by water flowing through what is now Valley Way because the two sides of the valley are so assymetrical, the north side of the valley is steep and the south side is gradual. It could not have been carved by a glacier coming from the north because it's steep side is to the north.

There is only a short section of the steep opposite side of the crater remaining today, the rest has been eroded away by water. The steep northern side of the "valley" section of Valley Way on both sides of Sixth Ave. eastward to Fifth Ave. is the section of the steep opposite side of the crater that is best preserved 12,000 years later. This corresponds to the steep drops in Lundy's Lane and Gray St. in the other crater.

However, I find that the erosion of the steep northern side of this crater from 5th Ave. westward reveals much about the natural history of the area since the crater was formed at the end of the last ice age. The larger impact crater, the one approximately bisected by Stanley Avenue, later filled with water, which we will call "Lake Niagara". This former lake that filled the crater after it had been formed, drained through the Valley Way Impact Crater, forming what we could call the "Valley Way River". It was this flowing water that eroded the steep northern bank of the crater that now forms the north side of the valley part of Valley Way from Sixth Ave. to Second Ave.

What happened is that the flowing water gradually eroded the northern side of Valley Way away. The side of the valley can still be clearly seen between Second and Fifth Avenues but is much lower than it is between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

Another curious feature is that as one drives eastward along Valley Way toward Victoria Ave., the low level of Valley Way suddenly ends and Simcoe St. as well as the reminder of Valley Way as it curves toward the northeast is considerably higher in elevation. This makes it seem as if the former Valley Way River suddenly evaporated into thin air.

However, it is the heavily eroded northern bank of Valley Way from Fifth Ave. to Second Ave. that solves the mystery. Most of the water in the river overflowed the eroding bank and where Morrison St. meets Victoria Ave. today, there was once a pool of water that was filled by the former Valley Way River. The former eastern shore of the pool can be seen on Morrison St. looking eastward toward Buckley Ave. from Valley Way.

This pool was a temporary stop for the flowing water and it continued eastward toward what is now the Niagara River along the route now occupied by Park St., which has a noticably lower level that Queen St. or Bridge St., on either side of it. Since this pool was not big enough to call a lake, let's call it the Victoria Pool. It covered what is now the main crossroads where Victoria Ave., Morrison St. and, Valley Way meet.

Another curious fact that I observed in the area is that the northern side of the Valley Way valley actually makes a right angle turn. Around Second Ave., it turns northward and if we look westward on Morrison St. from Valley Way toward Second Ave., we see the rise in the road surface that corresponds to the bank.

The solution to this is fairly obvious. As the glaciers melted, there was a lot of water around. Especially when it rained heavily, water in torrents flowed down the gradual side of this crater toward what is now Valley Way. This added to the volume of water flowing through from the other crater.

This tremendous volume of water is more than the northern bank of the Valley Way valley could hold. The water flowed over the northern bank, eroding the bank until it looked like you see it today. So much water flowed over the bank and out of the river that the Valley Way River actually came to an end where Valley Way now meets Second Ave. and the much broader Victoria Pool took in the flowing waters.

The flow in the Victoria Pool was concentrated on it's western side. The entry of so much water down the gradual slope going up to Jepson and Mc Rae Streets flowing perpendicular to the Valley Way River created a vector flow. This vector flow caused the Valley Way River to turn toward the northeast toward the western end of the valley occupied by Park St. The reason for this pool forming here is that this area represents the low point between the general southward slope of the Niagara Escarpment and the northward slope, easily seen along Victoria Avenue, of the glacial impact crater which formed the "valley" of Valley Way.

This section of the flow caused the rise in Morrison St. seen looking west from Valley Way toward Second Ave. This flow was on the western side of the Victoria Pool. The eastern side of the pool, seen along Morrison St. looking east toward Buckley Ave., was much more stagnant.

This scenario leads us to another conclusion. That it was the erosion of the steep northern bank of the Valley Way Valley from Fifth Ave. to Second Ave. that caused Lake Niagara to drain of water, or was at least a part of the reason. This is similar in principle to the draining of Lake Tonawanda when the falls, eroding it's way northward, broke through the ridge at Hubbard's Point.

The other crater must have been full of water at one time, it is easy to see how flowing water has eroded what would have been the sharper edges of the crater if we drive along Portage Rd. going southward from Valley Way to Lundy's Lane.

Now, we come to another feature of the area. If you drive east on Mc Rae St. from Stanley Ave., you will notice a sudden drop and than the ground rises back up again. This slope is generally a part of the first crater's gradual slope down toward what is now Stanley Ave. But this valley here in McRae St. was carved by flowing water.

It could not have been carved while Lake Niagara was full of water, that would make no sense. But after the lake drained, the crater, about a square mile in area, still acted as a vast cistern to collect rainwater. This depression in McRae St. is the remains of a culvert or channel that drained rainwater and possibly meltwater from the glacial ice which formed the crater into the Valley Way River. The Valley Way River itself obviously served as a drain for the water that flowed down from the high ground upon which Lundy's Lane is now located and originated at some point to the west of the intersection of Valley Way and Portage Rd.

The area around where Jepson St. and Homewood Ave. meet Valley Way, including the lower area of Leslie Park, was a pooling area where waters gathered before flowing into the "valley" part of Valley Way. You can see two drops in street levels that define where the water was flowing faster in comparison with the relatively placid water in the rest of Lake Niagara.

The first, I have already pointed out in my other posting is on Stanley Ave. near McRae St. as one drives north toward Valley Way. The second is on Slater Ave. between Rosedale Dr. and Jepson St. While Lake Niagara was filled with water, these two drops were not shorelines but represented the division between the fast-flowing water in the Valley Way River area and the more placid waters in the rest of the lake.

The two gradual slopes that represent the slices into the ground by the slabs of ice that created the two impact craters intersect. The point at which the two meet is in what is today Leslie Park. If you walk along the sidewalk that leads across the park, starting where Slater Ave. ends at Jepson St. the sidewalk will first go past the pool.

At this point, you are walking across the gradual slope of the first crater, with the steep side at Lundy's lane as described above. When the sidewalk drops to a lower level, you are walking down part of the gradual slope of the second crater, the one with the steep side on the northern side of Valley Way, which you can clearly see from there.

In Leslie Park, notice how the slope used for sledding in the winter starts out very gradually and than gets dramatically steeper. The steep part is the result of later erosion by water but the gradually-sloping section is a part of the cut by the slab of ice.

If you were to go to the intersection of Sixth Ave. and Jepson St., if you look west on Jepson St., you are looking at the cut of the first crater, the one with the steep side at Lundy's Lane. The slope of Jepson St. is only as steep as it is because of later water erosion.

When you look in a perpendicular direction, north toward Valley Way, you would be looking at the gradual side of the other crater, the one with the steep side on the northern side of Valley Way. The crater with the steep side at Lundy's Lane was later to become Lake Niagara, the crater with the steep side at the north side of Valley Way was to become the Valley Way River which drained Lake Niagara.

Another thing that I noticed is that the gradual slope of both craters is divided into two sections. If you drive westward on Kitchener St. from Victoria Ave. toward Stanley Ave., you will notice that as you pass McDonald Ave., the slope gets noticably steeper. On the other crater it is not as noticable but along Jepson St., you may notice that the slope seems steeper to the north, toward Valley Way, than to the south, Toward McRae St.

The reason for this is simple. As the giant slab of ice weighing many millions of tons slid off the lower section of the glacier and cut into the earth, the cut is represented by the steeper part of the slope away from the glacier. The shallower part of the slope, closer to the glacier, represents an area in which the ground was not actually sliced away by the ice but was compressed when the slab of ice fell after it's front edge had struck the ground.

The tracks of the glacier as it slid across the underlying rock strata, which we know is tilted toward the southwest in this area at about 20 ft. per mile, can easily be seen on the American side. From the intersection of John B. Daly Blvd. and Rainbow Blvd. in Niagara Falls, NY, it is very easy to see the downward slope taken by the vast sheet of ice as it headed for it's collision with the Niagara Falls Moraine, the high ground on the Canadian side by the falls.

The slope that the glacier slid along can be very clearly seen around the intersection of Third and Main Streets in Niagara Falls, NY. If you wonder why the glacier was moving from east to west when glaciers usually move north to south, this slope explains it. As the glacier of the last ice age began to melt and break apart, large broken slabs slid across the underlying rock strata like this. This scenario also helps to explain why the embayment at Dufferin Islands, discussed in the posting on this blog by that name, survived this glacial era. It was out of the path of this glacier due to the nearby slope.

My belief as far as a timeframe for the formation of the craters is that the glacier pressed up against the Niagara Falls Moraine fractured horizontally but not evenly across. The fracture started lower on the north side of the glacier than on the south side. The vast slab of ice that created the crater at Valley Way, we will call it "The Valley Way Crater", extended southeastward over what is now Chippawa. It broke free by the force of gravity.

This weakened the structure of the glacier and the larger slab over what is now Niagara Falls, NY, that formed what we will call "The Lundy's Lane Crater" or "The Lake Niagara Crater", broke free and slid over the lower portion of the glacier that had been occupied by the other slab and struck the ground.

LAKE DORCHESTER AND THE VALLEY WAY RIVER
.
On Dorchester Rd, south of Thorold Stone Road,. we notice that the ground along side streets to the east gets higher, such as on Pettit Ave., Freeman St. and, Cherrygrove Rd. The ground gets lower on the side streets to the west but if we go into the lower ground, we see that at Apollo Ct. and at the end of Dirdene St., the ground gets higher again.

This is another former lake in Niagara Falls. Since it is bisected by Dorchester Rd., let's call it Lake Dorchester. At Dorchester Rd. near Morrison St., we see some higher ground but then it gets lower again going further south on Dorchester Rd. This shows us that Lake Dorchester was an elongated, possibly segmented lake along a north-south axis.

It conducted the water of the Valley Way River, which ended up at the intersection of Portage Rd. and Valley Way. The river changed it's direction from southward to eastward because it was blocked by the high ground of the Niagara Falls Moraine.

DRIVING TOUR OF LAKE NIAGARA GLACIAL IMPACT CRATER

In Niagara Falls, Canada, we can take a driving tour of the crater or indentation that I am describing. It will require no more than 20 mins. from the starting point.

Let's begin from the intersection of Portage Rd. and Arthur St. Go south on Portage Rd. toward Valley Way a block away. Notice how Valley Way is at the bottom of a small valley. This is where the Valley Way River that I described entered Lake Niagara.

Continue southward on Portage Rd. Look to your left (eastward) down Kitchener and North Sts. You can see that Portage Rd. is roughly on the former western shore of the lake. Stanley Ave., the main road that you see at some distance is at what was the bottom of the lake.

Turn left (east) at Lundy's Lane, the main road that you come to. A short distance down, just as you pass Sylvia Place, you undergo a steep drop. This is the side of the impact crater in the southwesterly direction in which the impact was focused. Right in front of the Lundy's Lane Historical Society, it is more historic than anyone seems to notice.

Continue three streets to Allendale Ave. and turn right. Go two blocks south and turn right on Robinson St. Before you turn, look down Allendale and see the steep drop the same as the one at Lundy's Lane.

Turn right (west) on Grey Ave., the next street, and go down the steep drop there.

These three drops represent the main focus of the impact, like the steep side of the indentation caused by a golf club hitting soft ground at a low angle. Notice that this is similar to the "valley" section of Valley Way, which represents the Valley Way Crater. These three drops, in the same way, represent the Lundy's Lane Crater.

Drive to Ferry St./Lundy's Lane, the main road. Turn right and then turn left on Stanley Ave, another main street that approximately bisects the former lake.

Driving north on Stanley Ave., look to your right on Kitchener St. and notice that this side of the former lake is much more gradual than the other side that you saw. That is because the impact came from this direction, and the side away from the direction of the impact ice tends to be steeper. The analogy that I like to use is that of a golf club striking soft ground at a low angle.

As you pass Stamford and McRae Sts., going toward Valley Way on Stanley Ave., you will notice a drop in the road. This was created by the former fast flow of water in the Valley Way River. North of this drop represents the fast flowing water from one side of the lake to the other. South of it represents the relatively placid water of most of the lake. North of Valley Way on Stanley Ave., it is clear to see the shore of the former lake on Stanley Ave. at Morden St. and in the eastern portion of Arthur St.