Here is a quick look at my other blogs before you start this one.
My main blog, where the most recent postings on all topics are to be found, is http://www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/
If you liked this blog on the natural history of the Niagara area, you will also like my blogs about geology, http://www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com/ and global natural history concerning glaciers, http://www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com/ .
http://www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/ is my observations concerning meteorology and biology.
http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ is my blog about physics and astronomy.
http://www.markmeekcosmology.blogspot.com/ is my version of string theory that solves many unsolved mysteries about the underlying structure and beginning of the universe.
http://www.markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/ details my work with the fundamental patterns and complexity that underlies everything in existence.
http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ is about economics, history and, general human issues.
http://www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/ concerns progress in technology and ideas.
http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ is my religion blog.
http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ is proof that there must be a god.
http://www.mark-meek.blogspot.com/ is my autobiography
http://www.markmeektravel.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of North America. http://www.markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of Europe.
My books can be seen at http://www.bn.com/ http://www.amazon.com/ or, http://www.iuniverse.com/ just do an author search for "Mark Meek"
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Review Of The Natural History Of Niagara Falls
As if the human history of Niagara Falls on both sides of the border is not colorful enough, the natural history of the area is as colorful as the rainbow over the falls. Now, I have more to add to it. Let's begin with a review of the natural history of the Niagara region. This is my understanding of how Niagara came to be.
Around four hundred million years ago, what is now the Niagara region was at the bottom of a warm, shallow sea. Over the millennia, sediment collected on the bottom of the sea. As more sediment collected on top of it, the underlying sediment was compacted by it's weight into solid rock. This gradually formed the shales and sandstones that underlie the region today.
Eventually, small forms of life adapted to the conditions in the sea and their dead bodies were compacted in the same way to form limestones on top of the older, deeper shales and sandstones. The most recent major layer to form was a hard layer of limestone, also known as Lockport dolostone or dolomite.
Due to geological shifting, the sea drained of water and became dry land. Erosion set in. But because some layers of rock were harder and more resistant to erosion than others, erosion was uneven. One result of this is the escarpment at Lewiston-Queenston.
This escarpment is very old, around two hundred million years. It extends all the way from Watertown, NY to Wisconsin. This escarpment was not formed by tectonic shifting but by erosion. Geologists would refer to it as a cuesta. Under the Ontario Plain, the land below the escarpment from Lewiston to Youngstown and from Queenston to Niagara-on-the-Lake lie the very old shales and sandstones formed before life had adapted itself to the sea in which they formed.
The temperature varied due to various factors on earth and possibly, on the sun. It began to get colder to the north of the Niagara region. Eventually, it got cold enough so that the snow left from the last winter would not have melted by the time the next winter's snowfall arrived. Snow began to build up, layer after layer, year after year. The snow at lower levels was compressed into ice by the weight.
A vast sheet of ice formed in the north and began to work it's way southward, sliding due to the centrifugal force of the rotation of the earth. We have what is known as a glacier. The Niagara region experienced many glaciers, known as the Wisconsin Glaciers. The first of the last three arrived more than fifty thousand years ago and lasted for thousands of years. The Niagara area was covered by a sheet of ice that may have been more than a mile thick.
Then it got warmer for thousands of years. The second of the last three glaciers arrived maybe forty thousand years ago and may have lasted for eight thousand years. The most recent arrived about twenty thousand years ago and may have also lasted for eight thousand years. There were, of course, warm periods in between the glaciers.
After the last glacier withdrew, about twelve thousand years ago, water seeking lower ground found it's way from what we call Lake Erie to a point on the escarpment that is now Lewiston and Queenston. Actually, it did not take a very direct route. Excess water from Lake Erie formed a smaller lake to the north that natural historians have named Lake Tonawanda.
This lake was not very deep. It extended over most of what is now Niagara Falls, NY, Grand Island and, extended eastward to Rochester. Although the lake's eastern parts were shallower than it's western end. The deepest part of Lake Tonawanda was the south-western corner around what is now the Horseshoe (or Canadian) Falls. The strata is now slanted toward the southwest at about twenty feet per mile. What we now call Goat Island was probably under about thirty feet of water.
Lake Iroquois was an enlarged version of what is now Lake Ontario, extending all the way to the escarpment. There is a small terrace about thirty feet from the top of the escarpment called Eldridge's Terrace on the American Side and Roy's Terrace on the Canadian side. A terrace is a flat strip of land which interrupts the slope of a hill or escarpment. This terrace is actually a former beach formed by wave action on the surface of Lake Iroquois.
As water found it's way to the edge of the escarpment at what is now Lewiston-Queenston, it drained over the edge and fell about thirty feet into Lake Iroquois. This was the beginning of the falls.
At the time, about ten thousand years ago, this was not the only outlet of Lake Tonawanda to Lake Iroquois. There were actually five altogether. Traces of the others can still be seen on the escarpment today at Lockport, Gasport, Medina and, Holley.
So water draining from the Great Lakes basin flowed from what is now Lake Erie into the smaller Lake Tonawanda and then through those five established routes over the escarpment into Lake Iroquois. Eventually, these other outlets were left high and dry and the Niagara River was the only route that the waters of Lake Tonawanda, and Lake Erie behind it, took to Lake Iroquois.
Lake Iroquois is, of course, an enlarged version of what we now call Lake Ontario. It extended all the way to the escarpment so that what is now Lewiston, Queenston, Youngstown and, Niagara-on-the-Lake were underwater. The other side of the lake is what is now Toronto.
There is no comparable escarpment in Toronto to form the other side of the lake. But if you follow a north-south street northward in Toronto, Yonge St. for example, you will notice that the ground gets higher and higher. This is what once was the northern shore of Lake Iroquois.
When water began pouring over the escarpment from what we now call the Niagara River into Lake Iroquois, another factor came into play. The top layer of rock, the Lockport Dolostone, was much harder and more resistant to erosion than the underlying layers of limestone. The reason for this is that Lockport Dolostone is actually magnesium carbonate, while ordinary limestone is calcium carbonate.
This caused the underlying layers to be eroded by the falling waters more quickly than the top layer. Chunks of the top layer would remain intact but would break off when it's underlying supporting layers were eroded away by the falling water.
The effect of this was that the water always fell straight down, rather than as a sloping rapids, and gradually eroded it's way backward into the escarpment. Niagara Falls had been born.
Not too far from where the falls began, we can see that the level of the lake and the lower river (below the falls) must have been considerably higher than it is now. Smeaton's Ravine is on the Canadian side of the gorge between the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and the Sir Adam Beck Power Plants. It is about level with the Floral Clock. This ravine is the remains of an old waterfall that poured into the gorge about ten thousand years ago after the falls had eroded it's way southward from where the ravine is now located.
What is interesting about the ravine is that the erosion that the former falls has made in the rock does not go all the way down to the water. The reason why is that the river, and thus Lake Iroquois (now Lake Ontario) was at a much higher level then than it is now.
The gorge, or canyon, that the falls formed when it gradually worked it's way southward to where it is now from where it started at Lewiston-Queenston is narrow around where the power plants on both sides of the border are located. This is because at that time, it was only the water of Lake Erie that was flowing over the falls. The upper lakes had another route to the St. Lawrence River and the sea by river systems further north in Ontario. So, only about 15% of the water that flows over the falls now was flowing then.
The progress of the falls through this section of gorge was a little more complicated than this. For example, at one point a smaller falls separated from the main falls moving southward. But, the main falls overtook the smaller falls and cut it off. The result was an island in this part of the river, similar in principle to today's Goat Island. As the falls moved further, away from this island, it collapsed. The result is what we now call the Niagara Glen on the Canadian side.
As the falls eroded it's way southward, it eventually encountered a buried river gorge from the former geological era, the warm period between the second and third last glaciers to cover the area. Remember that the time since the falls began is following the last, glacier.
In the last warm period before our own, from about 32,000-20,000 years ago, a powerful river flowed from the area Where Lake Erie is now to a break in the escarpment it had eroded at the Canadian village of St. David's, a few kilometers west of Queenston. The river may have been similar to the present Niagara River.
There must have been a falls to carve out the gorge. The last glacier had filled in this river gorge with rocks and other debris. However, the debris with which the glacier filled in this old river gorge was much looser than the sorrounding solid rock. It was more like a landfill and not solid rock.
When the falls encountered this buried river gorge, it had a much easier time digging into it with the force of the falling water. It was so much easier that the falls changed direction to follow the buried river gorge as long as possible. The place where this meeting between the new Niagara River and the buried St. David's River, as it is called, is what we now know as the Whirlpool.
It is very easy to see the sudden change of direction that our Niagara River undertook at this point. We can see that this new direction forms a straight line through the Whirlpool to the vast eroded gap in the escarpment at the village of St. David's. The St. David's River, in the previous warm era, must have been very steep and fast-flowing because the lower river rapids in the Niagara River between the Whirlpool and the Whirlpool Bridge, the section of the former river that our present Niagara River re-excavated.
After the falls had moved southward past the area of the present Whirlpool Bridge, it's natural flow ceased to match the direction of the buried gorge and it continued eroding it's way slowly through solid rock as it had been doing since it encountered the buried gorge. The re-excavation of the buried St. David's Gorge must have been very fast, geologically speaking, compared to the falls working it's way slowly through solid rock.
The reason for the Whirlpool that now exists is that a whirlpool is what a fast-flowing river like the Niagara carves for itself when it makes an abrupt turn for some reason, in this case finding the looser fill of the buried gorge. A fast-flowing river is like a fast car, it cannot just turn on a dime. A whirlpool like ours serves the same purpose as the semi-circular ramps on a highway. A fast-moving car needs it in order to make a turn.
The next significant event in the natural history of the area occurred when the falls had worked it's way southward to Hubbard's Point. This point is a high point on the Canadian side as seen from the American side. The best place to see it is from the Gorge Discovery Center, formerly known as the Schoellkopf Geological Museum. It is built on the former site of the Schoellkopf Power Plant, which collapsed into the river in 1956.
Hubbard's Point is the high point of a ridge. Seen from the American side, it is at the third street north from Michael's Inn on the Canadian side. Michael's Inn is the white building not far north of the Canadian side of the Rainbow Bridge. If you are on the Canadian side, Hubbard's Point is where Eastwood Ct. meets River Rd. You will notice that the point is the high point, the ground on either side is lower.
Hubbard's Point is actually the top of a ridge, known as the Lyell-Johnson Ridge. The falls, working it's way southward, had to cut through this ridge. Since this ridge is the highest point in the falls' journey southward, that means that the surface level of Lake Tonawanda would logically begin to drop after the falls had cut through the ridge at Hubbard's point.
You may notice that the falls is now at the bottom of an ancient valley of which Hubbard's Point is the high point to the north. The falls, eroding it's way southward, cut through the ridge that was at Hubbard's Point about thirty-five hundred years ago.
I saw a diagram in a book depicting the boundaries of Lake Tonawanda. There was no actual map of where the shores of this lake were located relative to the streets of today. So, I went out and looked for the ancient shores myself. It was not difficult to find.
Going north on Military Rd. in the Town of Niagara, it is easy to notice the sudden increase in elevation as you pass K-Mart. This increase in elevation levels off not far north of Packard Rd. and is visible across the northern section of the K-Mart parking lot. When you travel southward on Military Rd. in the Town of Niagara approaching Lockport Rd. and K-Mart, it seems as if you are looking out over a lake. A few thousand years ago, you would have been.
Going north on Walmore Rd. in Wheatfield, the same type of sudden elevation is obvious just before reaching Lockport Rd. The terrain was obviously sculpted during the construction of the railroad bridge. But, the increase in height is unmistakable and is a continuation of the ancient northern shoreline that is also visible in front of K-Mart.
Further east, going north on Buffalo Rd. toward Sanborn, just after passing Lockport Rd., the same kind of sudden elevation is apparent. Although, the elevation increase is obviously becoming less pronounced as we move eastward, away from K-Mart.
Looking across the farms from Lockport Rd. toward Bergholz, the decrease in elevation is noticable as you look southward toward the Niagara River. The same gradual southward slope can also be seen in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls, NY. When on Niagara Falls Blvd. it is fairly easy to see the southward slope of the land when looking straight down the numbered streets from 77th to 82nd Sts.
The wide Upper Niagara River, from Grand Island to the falls is, of course, the shrunken remains of lake Tonawanda. As we know, the lake began draining from it's northern shore (K-Mart) toward the river of today when the falls finally cut through the ridge at Hubbard's Point about two thousand years ago. Lake Tonawanda had formed after the last glacier withdrew about twelve thousand years ago. The lake extended eastward to the Rochester area.
In Lake Tonawanda, there was an island that natural historians refer to as "Niagara Island". It was near where the American Falls are now. It's former shoreline was also easy to find. On Pine Ave., looking from around where McDonald's is now toward Portage Rd., the increase in elevation is very obvious. Portage Rd. is on what was the eastern shore of Niagara Island. Going north on Portage Rd., toward the Library, it is easily visible that Portage Rd. is on higher ground than 11th St. Looking northward on Main St. from the Niagara Falls Library, it becomes obvious that the ground is getting lower, this represents another former shore of Niagara Island.
This ancient shore can also easily be seen on streets running parallel to Pine Ave., such as Walnut and Ferry Avenues, also just east of Portage Rd. The higher ground on the mainland opposite Goat Island represents another former shore of Niagara Island in Lake Tonawanda.
A final important factor in the area's natural history is what we know as the Niagara Falls Moraine. A moraine is basically a mass of rocks, earth and, debris that is dropped by a glacier after having been gradually picked up elsewhere.
Near where the falls are now, we notice that there is high ground on the Canadian side, upon which the observation towers and the skyscraper hotels are built, but there is really no corresponding high ground on the American side. This high ground extends from the area of the whirlpool to just east of Dufferin Islands.
This moraine is important because it caused the lower river to flow northward instead of westward. If this high ground had not been there, the river may have ended up meeting the escarpment anywhere between St. Catharines and Hamilton.
I have noticed that we only have to look at a map to see signs of how vast was the volume of meltwater from glaciers at the end of the last ice age. A prominent feature of Lake Erie is the Long Point Peninsula extending far out into the lake from the Canadian shore. This peninsula was formed by sediment carried by the rush of water from melting glaciers in the Brantford-Cambridge-Kitchener area.
This peninsula forms a straight line and formed where sediment-laden discharge water from the melting ice sheet decreased in velocity as it mixed with the water of what is now Lake Erie. The peninsula points almost directly eastward from the shore from which it originates. The line which the peninsula forms is clearly a vector line of the discharge flow of the meltwater and the eastward movement of water in the lake.
Here is a map link http://www.maps.google.com/
If the water of Lake Erie had been relatively still at the time of the melting of the glacier, the axis of the Long Point Peninsula would be north-south instead of almost directly east. Since the main direction of the flow of meltwater on land here was southward. We only have to glance at a map of the lake to imagine the furious rush of water through it from melting glaciers further west.
The water from the melting glaciers must have been moving at high speed to be able to carry all of the sediment necessary to form the peninsula, yet the peninsula was pushed almost directly eastward instead of forming along the roughly north-south axis that it would have if Lake Erie was as still as it is today.
The entire lake must have resembled a raging river for at least a while, much like the broad upper Niagara River is today. This effect is possible due to the shallowness of Lake Erie. It is by far the most shallow of the Great Lakes, the eastern Buffalo end is deeper than the western Detroit-Toledo end.
The volume of meltwater from South-Central Ontario into Lake Erie can be estimated by the volume of sediment required to build the Long Point Peninsula. Then, by considering the eastward angle formed by the peninsula in the lake, it will be possible to estimate the former flow of water through Lake Erie and thus get an idea of the scope and depth of the glacier.
Now, back to Niagara Falls and the former Lake Tonawanda. We can see how extremely rapid the flow of water through Lake Erie must have been at the close of the last ice age. There is no evidence in the Niagara Gorge around Lewiston-Queenston of a vastly increased flow of water through in the very early days of the river and the falls. So where did all of this additional water go?
My answer is through the four now-dry outlets of the former Lake Tonawanda, mentioned above, as well as the Niagara River. The present river just happened to be the lowest of the five outlets so when the meltwater from the glacier was gone and the flow of water through Lake Erie diminished toward what it is today, only the Niagara River remained as an outlet for water from the upper Great Lakes over the escarpment.
Around four hundred million years ago, what is now the Niagara region was at the bottom of a warm, shallow sea. Over the millennia, sediment collected on the bottom of the sea. As more sediment collected on top of it, the underlying sediment was compacted by it's weight into solid rock. This gradually formed the shales and sandstones that underlie the region today.
Eventually, small forms of life adapted to the conditions in the sea and their dead bodies were compacted in the same way to form limestones on top of the older, deeper shales and sandstones. The most recent major layer to form was a hard layer of limestone, also known as Lockport dolostone or dolomite.
Due to geological shifting, the sea drained of water and became dry land. Erosion set in. But because some layers of rock were harder and more resistant to erosion than others, erosion was uneven. One result of this is the escarpment at Lewiston-Queenston.
This escarpment is very old, around two hundred million years. It extends all the way from Watertown, NY to Wisconsin. This escarpment was not formed by tectonic shifting but by erosion. Geologists would refer to it as a cuesta. Under the Ontario Plain, the land below the escarpment from Lewiston to Youngstown and from Queenston to Niagara-on-the-Lake lie the very old shales and sandstones formed before life had adapted itself to the sea in which they formed.
The temperature varied due to various factors on earth and possibly, on the sun. It began to get colder to the north of the Niagara region. Eventually, it got cold enough so that the snow left from the last winter would not have melted by the time the next winter's snowfall arrived. Snow began to build up, layer after layer, year after year. The snow at lower levels was compressed into ice by the weight.
A vast sheet of ice formed in the north and began to work it's way southward, sliding due to the centrifugal force of the rotation of the earth. We have what is known as a glacier. The Niagara region experienced many glaciers, known as the Wisconsin Glaciers. The first of the last three arrived more than fifty thousand years ago and lasted for thousands of years. The Niagara area was covered by a sheet of ice that may have been more than a mile thick.
Then it got warmer for thousands of years. The second of the last three glaciers arrived maybe forty thousand years ago and may have lasted for eight thousand years. The most recent arrived about twenty thousand years ago and may have also lasted for eight thousand years. There were, of course, warm periods in between the glaciers.
After the last glacier withdrew, about twelve thousand years ago, water seeking lower ground found it's way from what we call Lake Erie to a point on the escarpment that is now Lewiston and Queenston. Actually, it did not take a very direct route. Excess water from Lake Erie formed a smaller lake to the north that natural historians have named Lake Tonawanda.
This lake was not very deep. It extended over most of what is now Niagara Falls, NY, Grand Island and, extended eastward to Rochester. Although the lake's eastern parts were shallower than it's western end. The deepest part of Lake Tonawanda was the south-western corner around what is now the Horseshoe (or Canadian) Falls. The strata is now slanted toward the southwest at about twenty feet per mile. What we now call Goat Island was probably under about thirty feet of water.
Lake Iroquois was an enlarged version of what is now Lake Ontario, extending all the way to the escarpment. There is a small terrace about thirty feet from the top of the escarpment called Eldridge's Terrace on the American Side and Roy's Terrace on the Canadian side. A terrace is a flat strip of land which interrupts the slope of a hill or escarpment. This terrace is actually a former beach formed by wave action on the surface of Lake Iroquois.
As water found it's way to the edge of the escarpment at what is now Lewiston-Queenston, it drained over the edge and fell about thirty feet into Lake Iroquois. This was the beginning of the falls.
At the time, about ten thousand years ago, this was not the only outlet of Lake Tonawanda to Lake Iroquois. There were actually five altogether. Traces of the others can still be seen on the escarpment today at Lockport, Gasport, Medina and, Holley.
So water draining from the Great Lakes basin flowed from what is now Lake Erie into the smaller Lake Tonawanda and then through those five established routes over the escarpment into Lake Iroquois. Eventually, these other outlets were left high and dry and the Niagara River was the only route that the waters of Lake Tonawanda, and Lake Erie behind it, took to Lake Iroquois.
Lake Iroquois is, of course, an enlarged version of what we now call Lake Ontario. It extended all the way to the escarpment so that what is now Lewiston, Queenston, Youngstown and, Niagara-on-the-Lake were underwater. The other side of the lake is what is now Toronto.
There is no comparable escarpment in Toronto to form the other side of the lake. But if you follow a north-south street northward in Toronto, Yonge St. for example, you will notice that the ground gets higher and higher. This is what once was the northern shore of Lake Iroquois.
When water began pouring over the escarpment from what we now call the Niagara River into Lake Iroquois, another factor came into play. The top layer of rock, the Lockport Dolostone, was much harder and more resistant to erosion than the underlying layers of limestone. The reason for this is that Lockport Dolostone is actually magnesium carbonate, while ordinary limestone is calcium carbonate.
This caused the underlying layers to be eroded by the falling waters more quickly than the top layer. Chunks of the top layer would remain intact but would break off when it's underlying supporting layers were eroded away by the falling water.
The effect of this was that the water always fell straight down, rather than as a sloping rapids, and gradually eroded it's way backward into the escarpment. Niagara Falls had been born.
Not too far from where the falls began, we can see that the level of the lake and the lower river (below the falls) must have been considerably higher than it is now. Smeaton's Ravine is on the Canadian side of the gorge between the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and the Sir Adam Beck Power Plants. It is about level with the Floral Clock. This ravine is the remains of an old waterfall that poured into the gorge about ten thousand years ago after the falls had eroded it's way southward from where the ravine is now located.
What is interesting about the ravine is that the erosion that the former falls has made in the rock does not go all the way down to the water. The reason why is that the river, and thus Lake Iroquois (now Lake Ontario) was at a much higher level then than it is now.
The gorge, or canyon, that the falls formed when it gradually worked it's way southward to where it is now from where it started at Lewiston-Queenston is narrow around where the power plants on both sides of the border are located. This is because at that time, it was only the water of Lake Erie that was flowing over the falls. The upper lakes had another route to the St. Lawrence River and the sea by river systems further north in Ontario. So, only about 15% of the water that flows over the falls now was flowing then.
The progress of the falls through this section of gorge was a little more complicated than this. For example, at one point a smaller falls separated from the main falls moving southward. But, the main falls overtook the smaller falls and cut it off. The result was an island in this part of the river, similar in principle to today's Goat Island. As the falls moved further, away from this island, it collapsed. The result is what we now call the Niagara Glen on the Canadian side.
As the falls eroded it's way southward, it eventually encountered a buried river gorge from the former geological era, the warm period between the second and third last glaciers to cover the area. Remember that the time since the falls began is following the last, glacier.
In the last warm period before our own, from about 32,000-20,000 years ago, a powerful river flowed from the area Where Lake Erie is now to a break in the escarpment it had eroded at the Canadian village of St. David's, a few kilometers west of Queenston. The river may have been similar to the present Niagara River.
There must have been a falls to carve out the gorge. The last glacier had filled in this river gorge with rocks and other debris. However, the debris with which the glacier filled in this old river gorge was much looser than the sorrounding solid rock. It was more like a landfill and not solid rock.
When the falls encountered this buried river gorge, it had a much easier time digging into it with the force of the falling water. It was so much easier that the falls changed direction to follow the buried river gorge as long as possible. The place where this meeting between the new Niagara River and the buried St. David's River, as it is called, is what we now know as the Whirlpool.
It is very easy to see the sudden change of direction that our Niagara River undertook at this point. We can see that this new direction forms a straight line through the Whirlpool to the vast eroded gap in the escarpment at the village of St. David's. The St. David's River, in the previous warm era, must have been very steep and fast-flowing because the lower river rapids in the Niagara River between the Whirlpool and the Whirlpool Bridge, the section of the former river that our present Niagara River re-excavated.
After the falls had moved southward past the area of the present Whirlpool Bridge, it's natural flow ceased to match the direction of the buried gorge and it continued eroding it's way slowly through solid rock as it had been doing since it encountered the buried gorge. The re-excavation of the buried St. David's Gorge must have been very fast, geologically speaking, compared to the falls working it's way slowly through solid rock.
The reason for the Whirlpool that now exists is that a whirlpool is what a fast-flowing river like the Niagara carves for itself when it makes an abrupt turn for some reason, in this case finding the looser fill of the buried gorge. A fast-flowing river is like a fast car, it cannot just turn on a dime. A whirlpool like ours serves the same purpose as the semi-circular ramps on a highway. A fast-moving car needs it in order to make a turn.
The next significant event in the natural history of the area occurred when the falls had worked it's way southward to Hubbard's Point. This point is a high point on the Canadian side as seen from the American side. The best place to see it is from the Gorge Discovery Center, formerly known as the Schoellkopf Geological Museum. It is built on the former site of the Schoellkopf Power Plant, which collapsed into the river in 1956.
Hubbard's Point is the high point of a ridge. Seen from the American side, it is at the third street north from Michael's Inn on the Canadian side. Michael's Inn is the white building not far north of the Canadian side of the Rainbow Bridge. If you are on the Canadian side, Hubbard's Point is where Eastwood Ct. meets River Rd. You will notice that the point is the high point, the ground on either side is lower.
Hubbard's Point is actually the top of a ridge, known as the Lyell-Johnson Ridge. The falls, working it's way southward, had to cut through this ridge. Since this ridge is the highest point in the falls' journey southward, that means that the surface level of Lake Tonawanda would logically begin to drop after the falls had cut through the ridge at Hubbard's point.
You may notice that the falls is now at the bottom of an ancient valley of which Hubbard's Point is the high point to the north. The falls, eroding it's way southward, cut through the ridge that was at Hubbard's Point about thirty-five hundred years ago.
I saw a diagram in a book depicting the boundaries of Lake Tonawanda. There was no actual map of where the shores of this lake were located relative to the streets of today. So, I went out and looked for the ancient shores myself. It was not difficult to find.
Going north on Military Rd. in the Town of Niagara, it is easy to notice the sudden increase in elevation as you pass K-Mart. This increase in elevation levels off not far north of Packard Rd. and is visible across the northern section of the K-Mart parking lot. When you travel southward on Military Rd. in the Town of Niagara approaching Lockport Rd. and K-Mart, it seems as if you are looking out over a lake. A few thousand years ago, you would have been.
Going north on Walmore Rd. in Wheatfield, the same type of sudden elevation is obvious just before reaching Lockport Rd. The terrain was obviously sculpted during the construction of the railroad bridge. But, the increase in height is unmistakable and is a continuation of the ancient northern shoreline that is also visible in front of K-Mart.
Further east, going north on Buffalo Rd. toward Sanborn, just after passing Lockport Rd., the same kind of sudden elevation is apparent. Although, the elevation increase is obviously becoming less pronounced as we move eastward, away from K-Mart.
Looking across the farms from Lockport Rd. toward Bergholz, the decrease in elevation is noticable as you look southward toward the Niagara River. The same gradual southward slope can also be seen in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls, NY. When on Niagara Falls Blvd. it is fairly easy to see the southward slope of the land when looking straight down the numbered streets from 77th to 82nd Sts.
The wide Upper Niagara River, from Grand Island to the falls is, of course, the shrunken remains of lake Tonawanda. As we know, the lake began draining from it's northern shore (K-Mart) toward the river of today when the falls finally cut through the ridge at Hubbard's Point about two thousand years ago. Lake Tonawanda had formed after the last glacier withdrew about twelve thousand years ago. The lake extended eastward to the Rochester area.
In Lake Tonawanda, there was an island that natural historians refer to as "Niagara Island". It was near where the American Falls are now. It's former shoreline was also easy to find. On Pine Ave., looking from around where McDonald's is now toward Portage Rd., the increase in elevation is very obvious. Portage Rd. is on what was the eastern shore of Niagara Island. Going north on Portage Rd., toward the Library, it is easily visible that Portage Rd. is on higher ground than 11th St. Looking northward on Main St. from the Niagara Falls Library, it becomes obvious that the ground is getting lower, this represents another former shore of Niagara Island.
This ancient shore can also easily be seen on streets running parallel to Pine Ave., such as Walnut and Ferry Avenues, also just east of Portage Rd. The higher ground on the mainland opposite Goat Island represents another former shore of Niagara Island in Lake Tonawanda.
A final important factor in the area's natural history is what we know as the Niagara Falls Moraine. A moraine is basically a mass of rocks, earth and, debris that is dropped by a glacier after having been gradually picked up elsewhere.
Near where the falls are now, we notice that there is high ground on the Canadian side, upon which the observation towers and the skyscraper hotels are built, but there is really no corresponding high ground on the American side. This high ground extends from the area of the whirlpool to just east of Dufferin Islands.
This moraine is important because it caused the lower river to flow northward instead of westward. If this high ground had not been there, the river may have ended up meeting the escarpment anywhere between St. Catharines and Hamilton.
I have noticed that we only have to look at a map to see signs of how vast was the volume of meltwater from glaciers at the end of the last ice age. A prominent feature of Lake Erie is the Long Point Peninsula extending far out into the lake from the Canadian shore. This peninsula was formed by sediment carried by the rush of water from melting glaciers in the Brantford-Cambridge-Kitchener area.
This peninsula forms a straight line and formed where sediment-laden discharge water from the melting ice sheet decreased in velocity as it mixed with the water of what is now Lake Erie. The peninsula points almost directly eastward from the shore from which it originates. The line which the peninsula forms is clearly a vector line of the discharge flow of the meltwater and the eastward movement of water in the lake.
Here is a map link http://www.maps.google.com/
If the water of Lake Erie had been relatively still at the time of the melting of the glacier, the axis of the Long Point Peninsula would be north-south instead of almost directly east. Since the main direction of the flow of meltwater on land here was southward. We only have to glance at a map of the lake to imagine the furious rush of water through it from melting glaciers further west.
The water from the melting glaciers must have been moving at high speed to be able to carry all of the sediment necessary to form the peninsula, yet the peninsula was pushed almost directly eastward instead of forming along the roughly north-south axis that it would have if Lake Erie was as still as it is today.
The entire lake must have resembled a raging river for at least a while, much like the broad upper Niagara River is today. This effect is possible due to the shallowness of Lake Erie. It is by far the most shallow of the Great Lakes, the eastern Buffalo end is deeper than the western Detroit-Toledo end.
The volume of meltwater from South-Central Ontario into Lake Erie can be estimated by the volume of sediment required to build the Long Point Peninsula. Then, by considering the eastward angle formed by the peninsula in the lake, it will be possible to estimate the former flow of water through Lake Erie and thus get an idea of the scope and depth of the glacier.
Now, back to Niagara Falls and the former Lake Tonawanda. We can see how extremely rapid the flow of water through Lake Erie must have been at the close of the last ice age. There is no evidence in the Niagara Gorge around Lewiston-Queenston of a vastly increased flow of water through in the very early days of the river and the falls. So where did all of this additional water go?
My answer is through the four now-dry outlets of the former Lake Tonawanda, mentioned above, as well as the Niagara River. The present river just happened to be the lowest of the five outlets so when the meltwater from the glacier was gone and the flow of water through Lake Erie diminished toward what it is today, only the Niagara River remained as an outlet for water from the upper Great Lakes over the escarpment.
The Mystery Of Niagara Falls
There is a real mystery concerning the ceaseless flow of water over Niagara Falls. I have written quite a bit about my new findings in the natural history of the Niagara area. The mystery which we will explore today is not about the nature of the falls themselves or the area, but is about why the falls exist at all.
Just stop and think about it. A tremendous amount of water keeps pouring over these falls. Where does this water come from and why does it's flow never stop? These are questions about the falls that never seem to be asked. So much of what I write online is not the answering of questions that no one else can answer, but the asking of questions that no one else has asked.
The water that goes over Niagara Falls comes, of course, from the upper Great Lakes. The Niagara River brings water from Lake Erie, which is connected to Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and, Lake Superior. This is certainly no mystery.
But for water to keep pouring over the falls while the water levels of the upper lakes remains constant can only mean that there is excess water coming from somewhere. Many tons of water evaporate from the Great Lakes every second. Most of that water falls within the lakes' watershed and goes right back into the lakes.
Since the Great Lakes are essentially a closed water system, how can there be the excess water which goes over Niagara Falls?
First, we need to examine the winds around the Great Lakes. The world has bands of prevailing winds by latitude. The earth rotates eastward so that the prevailing winds around the equator are from the east.
North and south of that zone, further away from the equator, the prevailing winds counter the equatorial direction so that they are from the west. Going further north and south, the prevailing winds are once again around the poles the winds tend to be from the east, the Polar Easterlies.
On a map showing Hudson Bay in northern Canada, we can see that there are many more rivers flowing into the bay from the west, than the east. This is because the prevailing winds at that latitude are from the east and they pick up water from the bay and drop it to the west, where it flows back in.
The fact that the prevailing wind is from the west, rather than the east, is very important to the Great Lakes, and to Niagara Falls. The beginnings of the Mississippi River are not far east of the largest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior. The way I see it, if the prevailing wind were from the east it would pick up a lot of water from the lakes and drop it into the Mississippi River watershed. This would greatly diminish the volume of water in the lakes and there would be no excess water to go over Niagara Falls.
Fortunately for Niagara, most of the water that is removed from the upper Great Lakes by the west wind ends up back in the lakes' watershed when it falls as precipitation and eventually goes over the falls.
There are exceptions to this. One example is the water which evaporates from the upper lakes and falls into the watershed of Lake Ontario, the one "lower" lake downstream from the falls. Water which follows this route circumvents the falls. This includes water which enters Lake Ontario by rivers other than the Niagara. The Genesee River collects rainwater and snowmelt and empties into Lake Ontario at Rochester. On the Canadian side, the Humber River at Toronto and the Trent River further east, also represent water from the upper lakes which has gotten into Lake Ontario without going over the falls.
Incidentally, the reason that the gorge of the Niagara River gets narrower north of the whirlpool is because the Trent River system once drained the upper Great Lakes across Ontario and during this time, it was only Lake Erie which was draining through the Niagara River. The flow was less and thus this section of the gorge is narrower. I have not discovered this, it is already known.
Where I live, I notice that a south wind very rarely brings precipitation. This means that a wind from the south will be warm and dry and will thus pick up quite a bit of moisture from the lakes. We can see on a map that if we go a considerable distance north of the Great Lakes, the rivers flow northward, toward Hudson Bay. The lakes certainly do lose some water in this direction in the summer.
There is one other major route of water out of the Great Lakes. This is the Ohio River. It is easy to find this river on a map because it starts at Pittsburgh, with the joining of two smaller rivers, and forms the western border of West Virginia and the northern border of Kentucky.
Notice how the Ohio River almost always froms an approximate midpoint between the Great Lakes and the Appalaichan Mountains. This river drains into the Mississippi River and is a counduit for water that has evaporated from the Great Lakes and has fallen as precipitation south of the line from which it would have flowed back into the lakes.
So, water leaves the upper Great Lakes via the Ohio River, when it evaporates and falls outside the lakes' watershed to the south. It ends up in the watershed of Lake Ontario, without going over the falls, when it evaporates from the upper lakes and falls far enough to the west. More water is lost from the lakes when the warm, dry south wind of summer carries evaporated lake water far enough north to fall in the watershed of Hudson Bay.
But still, there is enough excess water coming into the upper lakes to create the flow over Niagara Falls. Where does this water come from?
An east wind bringing a lot of water with it from the Atlantic Ocean would be mostly blocked by the Appalaichan Mountains. The south winds in the Great Lakes region are mostly dry. The prevailing wind in the area is from the west, but the American west is also known for it's dryness.
As it turns out, both Niagara Falls and the Great Lakes are dependent on what goes on in a region to which few people give much thought.
In the north of Canada, direcly north of the Great Lakes in fact, is the wide expanse of Hudson Bay. Sorrounding Hudson Bay is low and swampy ground that is just about as vast as the bay itself. Few people live around Hudson Bay and really not many people have ever seen it, but tourists to Niagara Falls and residents of the entire Great Lakes region might want to give it a brief thought of appreciation because it is absolutely vital to the lakes.
Not only is Hudson Bay and the sorrounding swamp a source of water to the Great Lakes by way of evaporation, there are an fantastic number of small lakes, carved by glaciers, in the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba to the west. A really amazing fact is that about half of the surface area of both of these two vast provinces is either lake or swamp. And both lakes and swamps contribute water into the air by evaporation.
We can see by the river systems in the far north of Ontario that most of the water which evaporates from Hudson Bay and falls as precipitation ends up back in the bay, because it falls within it's watershed. But if any of this water gets far enough south before falling, it will fall into the Great Lakes watershed. Hudson Bay tends to freeze over during the winter, so this evaporation must take place during the warmer months.
So, not only is there no mystery about why there is the excess of water in the Great Lakes which flows over Niagara Falls, it can actually be broken down into a fairly simple and accurate formula.
A = B - (C + D + E)
Where A is the flow of water over the falls, as well as that which is diverted for the generation of electricity.
B is the water which evaporates from Hudson Bay, the sorrounding swamp land and, the lakes in Ontario and Manitoba to the north and northwest of the Great Lakes, and which falls as precipitation within the Great Lakes watershed.
C is the water which evaporates from the Great Lakes and it's watershed and is carried northward so that it falls in the Hudson Bay watershed.
D is the water which evaporates from the upper Great Lakes and falls as precipitation in the watershed of Lake Ontario. D is approximately equal to the flow of water in the St. Lawrence River minus that in the Niagara River.
E is the water which evaporates from the Great Lakes and it's watershed and falls as precipitation in the watershed of the Ohio River to the south.
Thus we can say that the Great Lakes, the largest system of fresh water in the world, is a product of both Hudson Bay to the north and the Appalaichan Mountains to the east and south.
To have a look at the falls and sorrounding cities go to http://www.multimap.com/
Just stop and think about it. A tremendous amount of water keeps pouring over these falls. Where does this water come from and why does it's flow never stop? These are questions about the falls that never seem to be asked. So much of what I write online is not the answering of questions that no one else can answer, but the asking of questions that no one else has asked.
The water that goes over Niagara Falls comes, of course, from the upper Great Lakes. The Niagara River brings water from Lake Erie, which is connected to Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and, Lake Superior. This is certainly no mystery.
But for water to keep pouring over the falls while the water levels of the upper lakes remains constant can only mean that there is excess water coming from somewhere. Many tons of water evaporate from the Great Lakes every second. Most of that water falls within the lakes' watershed and goes right back into the lakes.
Since the Great Lakes are essentially a closed water system, how can there be the excess water which goes over Niagara Falls?
First, we need to examine the winds around the Great Lakes. The world has bands of prevailing winds by latitude. The earth rotates eastward so that the prevailing winds around the equator are from the east.
North and south of that zone, further away from the equator, the prevailing winds counter the equatorial direction so that they are from the west. Going further north and south, the prevailing winds are once again around the poles the winds tend to be from the east, the Polar Easterlies.
On a map showing Hudson Bay in northern Canada, we can see that there are many more rivers flowing into the bay from the west, than the east. This is because the prevailing winds at that latitude are from the east and they pick up water from the bay and drop it to the west, where it flows back in.
The fact that the prevailing wind is from the west, rather than the east, is very important to the Great Lakes, and to Niagara Falls. The beginnings of the Mississippi River are not far east of the largest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior. The way I see it, if the prevailing wind were from the east it would pick up a lot of water from the lakes and drop it into the Mississippi River watershed. This would greatly diminish the volume of water in the lakes and there would be no excess water to go over Niagara Falls.
Fortunately for Niagara, most of the water that is removed from the upper Great Lakes by the west wind ends up back in the lakes' watershed when it falls as precipitation and eventually goes over the falls.
There are exceptions to this. One example is the water which evaporates from the upper lakes and falls into the watershed of Lake Ontario, the one "lower" lake downstream from the falls. Water which follows this route circumvents the falls. This includes water which enters Lake Ontario by rivers other than the Niagara. The Genesee River collects rainwater and snowmelt and empties into Lake Ontario at Rochester. On the Canadian side, the Humber River at Toronto and the Trent River further east, also represent water from the upper lakes which has gotten into Lake Ontario without going over the falls.
Incidentally, the reason that the gorge of the Niagara River gets narrower north of the whirlpool is because the Trent River system once drained the upper Great Lakes across Ontario and during this time, it was only Lake Erie which was draining through the Niagara River. The flow was less and thus this section of the gorge is narrower. I have not discovered this, it is already known.
Where I live, I notice that a south wind very rarely brings precipitation. This means that a wind from the south will be warm and dry and will thus pick up quite a bit of moisture from the lakes. We can see on a map that if we go a considerable distance north of the Great Lakes, the rivers flow northward, toward Hudson Bay. The lakes certainly do lose some water in this direction in the summer.
There is one other major route of water out of the Great Lakes. This is the Ohio River. It is easy to find this river on a map because it starts at Pittsburgh, with the joining of two smaller rivers, and forms the western border of West Virginia and the northern border of Kentucky.
Notice how the Ohio River almost always froms an approximate midpoint between the Great Lakes and the Appalaichan Mountains. This river drains into the Mississippi River and is a counduit for water that has evaporated from the Great Lakes and has fallen as precipitation south of the line from which it would have flowed back into the lakes.
So, water leaves the upper Great Lakes via the Ohio River, when it evaporates and falls outside the lakes' watershed to the south. It ends up in the watershed of Lake Ontario, without going over the falls, when it evaporates from the upper lakes and falls far enough to the west. More water is lost from the lakes when the warm, dry south wind of summer carries evaporated lake water far enough north to fall in the watershed of Hudson Bay.
But still, there is enough excess water coming into the upper lakes to create the flow over Niagara Falls. Where does this water come from?
An east wind bringing a lot of water with it from the Atlantic Ocean would be mostly blocked by the Appalaichan Mountains. The south winds in the Great Lakes region are mostly dry. The prevailing wind in the area is from the west, but the American west is also known for it's dryness.
As it turns out, both Niagara Falls and the Great Lakes are dependent on what goes on in a region to which few people give much thought.
In the north of Canada, direcly north of the Great Lakes in fact, is the wide expanse of Hudson Bay. Sorrounding Hudson Bay is low and swampy ground that is just about as vast as the bay itself. Few people live around Hudson Bay and really not many people have ever seen it, but tourists to Niagara Falls and residents of the entire Great Lakes region might want to give it a brief thought of appreciation because it is absolutely vital to the lakes.
Not only is Hudson Bay and the sorrounding swamp a source of water to the Great Lakes by way of evaporation, there are an fantastic number of small lakes, carved by glaciers, in the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba to the west. A really amazing fact is that about half of the surface area of both of these two vast provinces is either lake or swamp. And both lakes and swamps contribute water into the air by evaporation.
We can see by the river systems in the far north of Ontario that most of the water which evaporates from Hudson Bay and falls as precipitation ends up back in the bay, because it falls within it's watershed. But if any of this water gets far enough south before falling, it will fall into the Great Lakes watershed. Hudson Bay tends to freeze over during the winter, so this evaporation must take place during the warmer months.
So, not only is there no mystery about why there is the excess of water in the Great Lakes which flows over Niagara Falls, it can actually be broken down into a fairly simple and accurate formula.
A = B - (C + D + E)
Where A is the flow of water over the falls, as well as that which is diverted for the generation of electricity.
B is the water which evaporates from Hudson Bay, the sorrounding swamp land and, the lakes in Ontario and Manitoba to the north and northwest of the Great Lakes, and which falls as precipitation within the Great Lakes watershed.
C is the water which evaporates from the Great Lakes and it's watershed and is carried northward so that it falls in the Hudson Bay watershed.
D is the water which evaporates from the upper Great Lakes and falls as precipitation in the watershed of Lake Ontario. D is approximately equal to the flow of water in the St. Lawrence River minus that in the Niagara River.
E is the water which evaporates from the Great Lakes and it's watershed and falls as precipitation in the watershed of the Ohio River to the south.
Thus we can say that the Great Lakes, the largest system of fresh water in the world, is a product of both Hudson Bay to the north and the Appalaichan Mountains to the east and south.
To have a look at the falls and sorrounding cities go to http://www.multimap.com/
Dufferin Islands And The Former St. David's River
I am expanding this posting to include my observations on the significance of the location of the forebay of the historic Adams Power Plant, in Niagara Falls, NY, which has recently been in the news.
THE FORMATION OF THE EMBAYMENT AT DUFFERIN ISLANDS
I have come to the conclusion that the place where the falls at Niagara are now located was actually below ground level in the warm period before the last ice age. This was because the so-called Niagara Falls Moraine, having been deposited in the area by glacial movement in ice ages and seen today as the high ground on the Canadian side by the falls, extended further eastward in the warm period prior to the last ice age.
The key to understanding how we can know this is the embayment at Dufferin Islands, some distance upstream from the falls on the Canadian side. This is one thing about Niagara natural history that really stands out as requiring special explanation. What was it that could have formed the so-called "embayment" at Dufferin Islands? Looking on a topographical map or satellite photos, the embayment looks just about identical in both size and shape to the whirlpool in the Niagara Gorge. The only difference is that the whirlpool is much deeper.
Here is the map and satellite imagery link that I use: http://www.maps.google.com/ .
Just what created the embayment at Dufferin Islands? The whirlpool in the Niagara Gorge is what the river carved out for itself in order to make a abrupt change of direction, in that case because it met the looser fill of the St. David's River Gorge that had been buried by the last glacier. The lower Niagara River that carved the whirlpool is much narrower than the upper river at Dufferin Islands. Therefore, it had much more force concentrated on a limited area.
THE EMBAYMENT AT DUFFERIN ISLANDS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN FORMED BY ANY WATER DIVERSION FROM THE RIVER
As far as I can see, there is absolutely no sign of anything in the upper river, above the falls, near Dufferin Islands that would have diverted the very powerful stream of water southwestward that would have been required to carve out this embayment. Some people may say that something which formerly existed in the upper river near Dufferin Islands diverted the flowing water to carve the embayment. After careful thought, I cannot believe that for five reasons.
First, there is absolutely no trace of anything in the upper river near the embayment at Dufferin Islands which would cause such a diversion. If there was, it would have to have been made of very solid rock to divert the powerful stream to carve the embayment without out being worn away itself. If it was made of such solid rock and had been large enough to cause such a diversion, we should clearly see some remains of it today, yet we do not. The so-called Green Cascade, the low waterfall above the main falls that you can get near at the outermost of the Three Sisters Islands, stretches right across the river and points at Dufferin Islands, but that is a drop rather than a barrier and would in no way divert a narrow, powerful stream of water at Dufferin Islands. The Green Cascade can be seen in the satellite imagery as the white line of the Upper Rapids that is furthest east from the brink of the falls.
Second, we can see that the entire terrace on which Queen Victoria Park is now located was carved by flowing water after having been compacted by ice sliding westward across the slope of the rock strata. But that terrace bears no resemblence to the embayment at all. The park terrace follows a very wide curve, the embayment, a very tight curve.
Third, remember that until a few thousand years ago, the water level in the upper river near Dufferin Islands was at a much higher level than it is now, as a lake instead of a river. It began to drop only when the falls, eroding it's way southward, broke through the ridge at Hubbard's Point, causing the former Lake Tonawanda to drain. Simple physics tells us that in this case, the fast flow of water in the upper river, around what is now Dufferin Islands, would be mainly at the surface of the then-lake. The water at depths would be more stationary.
Thus, even if there was something in the river to divert the water to carve the embayment, it would not have had sufficient force to do so because the volume of water in the river would have been too large relative to the amount going over the falls to have had much force. At this time it was called Lake Tonawanda, not the Niagara River. The fact that it was called a lake implies clearly that the water was flowing very slowly or not at all.
Fourth, there is actually another mass in the upper Niagara River that diverts fast-flowing water. It is known as Goat Island. Yet, we see no sign of any kind of embayment forming on the shore of the mainland around Goat Island.
Fifth, it may be said that it would take a lesser force of water to carve the embayment at Dufferin Islands than to carve the whirlpool because the embayment is carved into a glacial moraine of relatively loose debris while the whirlpool is carved into solid rock. Yet, this is not accurate. The whirlpool in the gorge formed when the falls, eroding it's way southward, met the buried St. David's River Gorge from the previous warm era between the glaciers. The very reason that the river abruptly changes direction at this point is that the glacial debris filling the former river gorge was much looser than the surrounding rock layers.
Therefore, the whirlpool must have been carved from much the same type of material as the embayment at Dufferin Islands. Since the embayment is similar to the whirlpool in size and shape, we can logically conclude that it took fast-flowing water of similar velocity and volume to carve both.
The whirlpool in the Niagara Gorge is, of course, much deeper than the embayment at Dufferin Islands. But that can easily be explained by the hard layer of Lockport dolostone that causes the falls to exist. As the falls cuts it's way backward through the underlying limestone strata, this hard upper layer gradually breaks off in pieces so that a waterfall forms instead of a long and sloping rapids. The whirlpool was carved below this layer while the embayment was carved above this layer and was prevented from eroding deeper by this layer.
So, how did the embayment at Dufferin Islands form then? It is obvious that the embayment was once a whirlpool and we know that a whirlpool forms when a narrow and fast-flowing river has a reason to suddenly change direction. If the angle of the change of direction is great enough, a whirlpool is carved out to accommodate the water's abrupt change of direction.
THE FORMER ST. DAVID'S RIVER AND THE EMBAYMENT AT DUFFERIN ISLANDS
One glance at a map shows us that the course of the former gorge of the St. David's River, which the present Niagara River began following when it encountered the buried former gorge at what is now the whirlpool, also forms a line with the Green Cascade and Dufferin Islands. On Goat Island, it can be seen that there is a dip in the ground level in a line that continues from the Green Cascade. My conclusion then, is that the embayment at Dufferin Islands was once part of the St. David's River in the previous warm era before the last ice age.
However, that obviously cannot be a complete answer. Dufferin Islands does not look like a river gorge, it is an embayment or a former whirlpool. It must have been where a fast-flowing river once changed direction. A river formed, carrying water from what is now Lake Erie, flowing southwest along the approximate route of what is now Packard Road in Niagara Falls, NY. This was the warm era before ours and so the former Lake Tonawanda was not there. Since Niagara Falls, NY was originally named Manchester, after the industrial city of Manchester, England, I wish to name this the Manchester River.
The reason that this river took such a roundabout route is that we know that the Niagara Falls Moraine once extended much further eastward, and this drainage would have had to go around the moraine. The river changed direction in order to change the flow from the southwestward slope of the underlying rock layers in the area to the northward direction to empty into what is now Lake Ontario, and the whirlpool that formed to accommodate the sudden change of direction formed the present Dufferin Islands Embayment. The rest of the river flows from there to the Niagara Escarpment at the Ontario village of St. David's. The Manchester River is actually the branch of this river upstream from what is now Dufferin Islands.
That is the most logical, in fact the only logical, reason I can think of for the formation of the embayment.
WHY DID THE DUFFERIN ISLANDS EMBAYMENT FORM WHERE IT DID?
But then the next question is why the embayment at Dufferin Islands formed where it did. If we can see that the river at the area of the falls today occupies the valley that I have pointed out as the Niagara Valley that now hosts the falls, why didn't the St. David's River in the previous warm era, before the last ice age, also occupy that valley. Why would this embayment form some distance upstream from the lowest point of the valley?
There is a very simple and obvious answer. The Niagara Falls Moraine, seen today as the high ground on the Canadian side by the falls, extended further eastward. The St. David's River, downstream from it's change of direction at Dufferin Islands ran along the edge of the moraine. This line is marked today by the Green Cascade, extending across the Niagara River from Dufferin Islands, and the extending dip in the ground level on Goat Island, adjacent to the "Three Sister islands" and in a line with the Green Cascade.
The great masses of ice during the last ice age, sliding across the westward slope of the rock layers in the area, pushed the soil of the moraine westward to where it is now as the high ground on the Canadian side. It is this slope that creates the rapids above the falls, and can be easily seen on the American side around the falls area. In the posting "Why Are There Two Falls At Niagara"?, I explained how one such berg of ice must have slid down the southward slope in the LaSalle area of Niagara Falls, NY, carved Burnt Ship Creek on Grand Island, then slid along the westward slope to carve the ground away where the American Falls would later form.
So, this scenario provides a neat explanation of how the mysterious embayment at Dufferin Islands was formed and how it connects to what we know as the former St. David's River and why it is some distance upstream from where the low point of the valley which hosts the falls lies. This was at the edge of the Niagara Falls Moraine, and this means that what is now the falls was below ground level before the moraine was compacted to it's present position by the westward sliding movement of glacial ice across the rock strata of what is now the Upper Rapids at the end of the last ice age.
THE ADAMS POWER PLANT FOREBAY
The old Adams Power Plant, in Niagara Falls NY, has been in the local news recently. This was the world's first large-scale alternating current generating plant, according to the article on www.wikipedia.org "Adams Power Plant Transformer House".
The thing that has long caught my attention about this former power generating plant, most of which is no longer standing, is that the remaining section of it's forebay, through which water entered from the Niagara River to generate electricity by falling through a tunnel to the level of the lower river below the falls, points directly to the embayment of Dufferin Islands on the Canadian side of the river. This forebay can easily be seen in the satellite imagery on the U.S. side, between the river shore and a highway, some distance east of the eastern end of Goat Island.
The forebay of the power plant, most of which has been filled in but can be seen in one of the photos in the Wikipedia article, is located exactly where we would expect the Manchester River, the section of the St. David's River upstream from the embayment at Dufferin Islands, to have been. Water flowed along this route to the embayment at Dufferin Islands, where it changed direction and continued along the St. David's River through what is now the whirlpool and to the escarpment at the village of St. David's. This drainage route still exists across Niagara Falls, NY, althgough much reduced in water volume. After the last ice age and the draining of the former Lake Tonawanda, it was manifested again as Gill Creek.
My speculation is that when the Adams Power Plant was built, in 1895, the builders made use of a line along which the rock strata had been eroded away by this former river in order to speed construction of the forebay. This could be the reason that the power plant was located exactly where it was.
There was precedence in the area, during the Nineteenth Century, of making use of existing natural waterways in canal construction. The Erie Canal was dug as far as Tonawanda Creek, and then the creek became the canal. The two separated at North Tonawanda, near the Niagara River. Tonawanda Creek flowed into the river while the Erie Canal continued toward Buffalo along what is now the broad stretch of Niagara Street in Tonawanda (where Tops is located). The canal ran right alongside the river, with one of the canal's towpaths separating the two, until the canal was filled in as far as the towpath to form Niawanda Park. The Erie Canal continued from there, to Buffalo, along the route which is now occupied by the Interstate 190 Highway.
THE FORMATION OF THE EMBAYMENT AT DUFFERIN ISLANDS
I have come to the conclusion that the place where the falls at Niagara are now located was actually below ground level in the warm period before the last ice age. This was because the so-called Niagara Falls Moraine, having been deposited in the area by glacial movement in ice ages and seen today as the high ground on the Canadian side by the falls, extended further eastward in the warm period prior to the last ice age.
The key to understanding how we can know this is the embayment at Dufferin Islands, some distance upstream from the falls on the Canadian side. This is one thing about Niagara natural history that really stands out as requiring special explanation. What was it that could have formed the so-called "embayment" at Dufferin Islands? Looking on a topographical map or satellite photos, the embayment looks just about identical in both size and shape to the whirlpool in the Niagara Gorge. The only difference is that the whirlpool is much deeper.
Here is the map and satellite imagery link that I use: http://www.maps.google.com/ .
Just what created the embayment at Dufferin Islands? The whirlpool in the Niagara Gorge is what the river carved out for itself in order to make a abrupt change of direction, in that case because it met the looser fill of the St. David's River Gorge that had been buried by the last glacier. The lower Niagara River that carved the whirlpool is much narrower than the upper river at Dufferin Islands. Therefore, it had much more force concentrated on a limited area.
THE EMBAYMENT AT DUFFERIN ISLANDS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN FORMED BY ANY WATER DIVERSION FROM THE RIVER
As far as I can see, there is absolutely no sign of anything in the upper river, above the falls, near Dufferin Islands that would have diverted the very powerful stream of water southwestward that would have been required to carve out this embayment. Some people may say that something which formerly existed in the upper river near Dufferin Islands diverted the flowing water to carve the embayment. After careful thought, I cannot believe that for five reasons.
First, there is absolutely no trace of anything in the upper river near the embayment at Dufferin Islands which would cause such a diversion. If there was, it would have to have been made of very solid rock to divert the powerful stream to carve the embayment without out being worn away itself. If it was made of such solid rock and had been large enough to cause such a diversion, we should clearly see some remains of it today, yet we do not. The so-called Green Cascade, the low waterfall above the main falls that you can get near at the outermost of the Three Sisters Islands, stretches right across the river and points at Dufferin Islands, but that is a drop rather than a barrier and would in no way divert a narrow, powerful stream of water at Dufferin Islands. The Green Cascade can be seen in the satellite imagery as the white line of the Upper Rapids that is furthest east from the brink of the falls.
Second, we can see that the entire terrace on which Queen Victoria Park is now located was carved by flowing water after having been compacted by ice sliding westward across the slope of the rock strata. But that terrace bears no resemblence to the embayment at all. The park terrace follows a very wide curve, the embayment, a very tight curve.
Third, remember that until a few thousand years ago, the water level in the upper river near Dufferin Islands was at a much higher level than it is now, as a lake instead of a river. It began to drop only when the falls, eroding it's way southward, broke through the ridge at Hubbard's Point, causing the former Lake Tonawanda to drain. Simple physics tells us that in this case, the fast flow of water in the upper river, around what is now Dufferin Islands, would be mainly at the surface of the then-lake. The water at depths would be more stationary.
Thus, even if there was something in the river to divert the water to carve the embayment, it would not have had sufficient force to do so because the volume of water in the river would have been too large relative to the amount going over the falls to have had much force. At this time it was called Lake Tonawanda, not the Niagara River. The fact that it was called a lake implies clearly that the water was flowing very slowly or not at all.
Fourth, there is actually another mass in the upper Niagara River that diverts fast-flowing water. It is known as Goat Island. Yet, we see no sign of any kind of embayment forming on the shore of the mainland around Goat Island.
Fifth, it may be said that it would take a lesser force of water to carve the embayment at Dufferin Islands than to carve the whirlpool because the embayment is carved into a glacial moraine of relatively loose debris while the whirlpool is carved into solid rock. Yet, this is not accurate. The whirlpool in the gorge formed when the falls, eroding it's way southward, met the buried St. David's River Gorge from the previous warm era between the glaciers. The very reason that the river abruptly changes direction at this point is that the glacial debris filling the former river gorge was much looser than the surrounding rock layers.
Therefore, the whirlpool must have been carved from much the same type of material as the embayment at Dufferin Islands. Since the embayment is similar to the whirlpool in size and shape, we can logically conclude that it took fast-flowing water of similar velocity and volume to carve both.
The whirlpool in the Niagara Gorge is, of course, much deeper than the embayment at Dufferin Islands. But that can easily be explained by the hard layer of Lockport dolostone that causes the falls to exist. As the falls cuts it's way backward through the underlying limestone strata, this hard upper layer gradually breaks off in pieces so that a waterfall forms instead of a long and sloping rapids. The whirlpool was carved below this layer while the embayment was carved above this layer and was prevented from eroding deeper by this layer.
So, how did the embayment at Dufferin Islands form then? It is obvious that the embayment was once a whirlpool and we know that a whirlpool forms when a narrow and fast-flowing river has a reason to suddenly change direction. If the angle of the change of direction is great enough, a whirlpool is carved out to accommodate the water's abrupt change of direction.
THE FORMER ST. DAVID'S RIVER AND THE EMBAYMENT AT DUFFERIN ISLANDS
One glance at a map shows us that the course of the former gorge of the St. David's River, which the present Niagara River began following when it encountered the buried former gorge at what is now the whirlpool, also forms a line with the Green Cascade and Dufferin Islands. On Goat Island, it can be seen that there is a dip in the ground level in a line that continues from the Green Cascade. My conclusion then, is that the embayment at Dufferin Islands was once part of the St. David's River in the previous warm era before the last ice age.
However, that obviously cannot be a complete answer. Dufferin Islands does not look like a river gorge, it is an embayment or a former whirlpool. It must have been where a fast-flowing river once changed direction. A river formed, carrying water from what is now Lake Erie, flowing southwest along the approximate route of what is now Packard Road in Niagara Falls, NY. This was the warm era before ours and so the former Lake Tonawanda was not there. Since Niagara Falls, NY was originally named Manchester, after the industrial city of Manchester, England, I wish to name this the Manchester River.
The reason that this river took such a roundabout route is that we know that the Niagara Falls Moraine once extended much further eastward, and this drainage would have had to go around the moraine. The river changed direction in order to change the flow from the southwestward slope of the underlying rock layers in the area to the northward direction to empty into what is now Lake Ontario, and the whirlpool that formed to accommodate the sudden change of direction formed the present Dufferin Islands Embayment. The rest of the river flows from there to the Niagara Escarpment at the Ontario village of St. David's. The Manchester River is actually the branch of this river upstream from what is now Dufferin Islands.
That is the most logical, in fact the only logical, reason I can think of for the formation of the embayment.
WHY DID THE DUFFERIN ISLANDS EMBAYMENT FORM WHERE IT DID?
But then the next question is why the embayment at Dufferin Islands formed where it did. If we can see that the river at the area of the falls today occupies the valley that I have pointed out as the Niagara Valley that now hosts the falls, why didn't the St. David's River in the previous warm era, before the last ice age, also occupy that valley. Why would this embayment form some distance upstream from the lowest point of the valley?
There is a very simple and obvious answer. The Niagara Falls Moraine, seen today as the high ground on the Canadian side by the falls, extended further eastward. The St. David's River, downstream from it's change of direction at Dufferin Islands ran along the edge of the moraine. This line is marked today by the Green Cascade, extending across the Niagara River from Dufferin Islands, and the extending dip in the ground level on Goat Island, adjacent to the "Three Sister islands" and in a line with the Green Cascade.
The great masses of ice during the last ice age, sliding across the westward slope of the rock layers in the area, pushed the soil of the moraine westward to where it is now as the high ground on the Canadian side. It is this slope that creates the rapids above the falls, and can be easily seen on the American side around the falls area. In the posting "Why Are There Two Falls At Niagara"?, I explained how one such berg of ice must have slid down the southward slope in the LaSalle area of Niagara Falls, NY, carved Burnt Ship Creek on Grand Island, then slid along the westward slope to carve the ground away where the American Falls would later form.
So, this scenario provides a neat explanation of how the mysterious embayment at Dufferin Islands was formed and how it connects to what we know as the former St. David's River and why it is some distance upstream from where the low point of the valley which hosts the falls lies. This was at the edge of the Niagara Falls Moraine, and this means that what is now the falls was below ground level before the moraine was compacted to it's present position by the westward sliding movement of glacial ice across the rock strata of what is now the Upper Rapids at the end of the last ice age.
THE ADAMS POWER PLANT FOREBAY
The old Adams Power Plant, in Niagara Falls NY, has been in the local news recently. This was the world's first large-scale alternating current generating plant, according to the article on www.wikipedia.org "Adams Power Plant Transformer House".
The thing that has long caught my attention about this former power generating plant, most of which is no longer standing, is that the remaining section of it's forebay, through which water entered from the Niagara River to generate electricity by falling through a tunnel to the level of the lower river below the falls, points directly to the embayment of Dufferin Islands on the Canadian side of the river. This forebay can easily be seen in the satellite imagery on the U.S. side, between the river shore and a highway, some distance east of the eastern end of Goat Island.
The forebay of the power plant, most of which has been filled in but can be seen in one of the photos in the Wikipedia article, is located exactly where we would expect the Manchester River, the section of the St. David's River upstream from the embayment at Dufferin Islands, to have been. Water flowed along this route to the embayment at Dufferin Islands, where it changed direction and continued along the St. David's River through what is now the whirlpool and to the escarpment at the village of St. David's. This drainage route still exists across Niagara Falls, NY, althgough much reduced in water volume. After the last ice age and the draining of the former Lake Tonawanda, it was manifested again as Gill Creek.
My speculation is that when the Adams Power Plant was built, in 1895, the builders made use of a line along which the rock strata had been eroded away by this former river in order to speed construction of the forebay. This could be the reason that the power plant was located exactly where it was.
There was precedence in the area, during the Nineteenth Century, of making use of existing natural waterways in canal construction. The Erie Canal was dug as far as Tonawanda Creek, and then the creek became the canal. The two separated at North Tonawanda, near the Niagara River. Tonawanda Creek flowed into the river while the Erie Canal continued toward Buffalo along what is now the broad stretch of Niagara Street in Tonawanda (where Tops is located). The canal ran right alongside the river, with one of the canal's towpaths separating the two, until the canal was filled in as far as the towpath to form Niawanda Park. The Erie Canal continued from there, to Buffalo, along the route which is now occupied by the Interstate 190 Highway.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Burnt Ship Creek And The American Falls
Burnt Ship Creek is the wide marshy area that separates Grand Island from Buckhorn Island at the northwest corner of Grand Island, a short distance from the North Grand Island Bridges. I realize that Burnt Ship Creek could only have been formed by sliding icebergs as the glaciers melted and broke up at the end of the last ice age.
In a similar way, we could say that Goat Island (the land separating the two main falls) exists because the southward slope in the upper rapids, which is why the water above the falls is deeper on the Canadian side, kept such large chunks of ice moving westward away from it.
Image from Google Earth
Image from Google Earth
The geometry of Burnt Ship Creek is completely wrong for it to have been carved by the river. The thing that is striking about Burnt Ship Creek is how symmetrical it's width is, at least until it widens in it's far western section. Another thing is it's abrupt right angle turn.
How can we see a marsh with near-symmetrical width and which makes an abrupt 90 degree turn and not think that something very unusual was at work here?
But suppose Burnt Ship Creek was carved by one or more sliding icebergs that broke free from the melting glacier and slid southward across the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls, NY. That would explain the existence of the creek perfectly. This explanation fits with what we see of the slope of the land caused by the underlying rock strata. The slope is to the south and west.
From Niagara Falls Blvd., it is fairly easy to see the downward slope of the ground going southward around 75th to 77th Sts. in Niagara Falls. Then, the upper rapids in the Niagara River just west of Grand Island is caused by the downward slope of the underlying rock strata going westward.
The sliding icebergs, wearing away the ground beneath them as they moved, slid across what is now the Niagara River and then abruptly switched direction when the primarly slope of the underlying ground went from southward to westward. This explains the 90 degree angle of the marsh.
We can see the underlying slope of the ground at Burnt Ship Creek by the fact that it's western, downstream, end is much more watery than it's beginning. We can also see that the northern shore of nearby Navy Island forms almost a straight line with the southern shore of Burnt Ship Creek. This is because it was worn away by the iceberg as it continued westward. I can think of no better explanation of why this creek exists.
WHY ARE THERE TWO FALLS AT NIAGARA?
An enduring mystery of Niagara Falls is why does all the water not go over one falls. There is a definite tilt of the underlying rock strata in the area to the southwest. This is why water goes over the main falls at Niagara, the Horseshoe Falls. So why does about 8% of the water that is set to go over the falls make a northward detour, seemingly against gravity, to form a second falls at Niagara, the American Falls. Actually two other falls are formed by this detour, the other is the smaller Bridal Veil Falls.
A glacier brings a virtual ocean of water to areas high on land where this volume of water would not otherwise be and when the glacier melts, this water has a permanent effect on the land. In addition, if there is a slope to the land when a glacier melts, massive chunks of ice will break off and slide along the slope. This happened extensively at Niagara Falls.
There is a westward and southward slope to the underlying rock strata in the area of Niagara Falls, USA and so secondary glaciation in the form of sliding icebergs at the end of the ice age was a factor in forming the falls as we see them today. The upper river from North Tonawanda down to the falls is the lakebed of the former Lake Tonawanda that existed for most of the time since the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago.
The reason that this was the lakebed is that it is at the low line of a southward slope to the land in the area and itself has a westward slope toward the falls. We can tell by the Niagara Falls Moraine, the high ground on the Canadian side around the falls that it was impacted by massive blocks of ice sliding across the westward slope, seen in the Upper Rapids just before the falls.
The southward slope, best seen from Niagara Falls Blvd. looking southward along the numbered streets in the 70s in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls is what deposited these icebergs from the melting glacier in the line that became the upper river after Lake Tonawanda drained.
Now, let's go back to Burnt Ship Creek. (Note-I am unsure where the name "Burnt Ship Creek" comes from. Presumably, in the days of wooden warships in the area, one ship fired hot shot into another).
I established that Burnt Ship Creek was formed by a massive iceberg that had slid down the southward slope in the 70s streets in LaSalle and then began sliding westward, toward what is now the falls, when it reached a point in which the slope was more westward than southward. This scraped away the ground along it's path and the result was Burnt Ship Creek, a wide marsh with a 90 degree angle, after Lake Tonawanda drained.
If the iceberg that formed Burnt Ship Creek had continued on it's course, it veers somewhat northward on it's westward course after it leaves the western end of Burnt Ship Creek, it will move along the course of the channel between Goat Island and the mainland that leads to the American Falls.
In some areas the general southwest slope of the underlying rock strata is more southward and in others, it is more westward. The route taken by this iceberg from Burnt Ship Creek to what is now the falls avoids the southward sloping areas so that the falls it caused to form results from a detour away from the main falls which seemingly defies gravity. The river was not there at the time, of course, so the iceberg continued westward to collide with the high ground on the Canadian side, where it finished melting.
The channel north of Goat Island leading to the American Falls has something in common with Burnt Ship Creek. Both get wider near their downstream, western ends. This can be explained by the fact that the iceberg that formed both was actually a mass of ice that was fragmenting and melting as it went along, eroding away the ground as it went, and thus spreading out. This formed a channel through which water later flowed from the main stretch of river and thus is why we have two falls, actually three, instead of just one.
The geometry of Burnt Ship Creek is completely wrong for it to have been carved by the river. The thing that is striking about Burnt Ship Creek is how symmetrical it's width is, at least until it widens in it's far western section. Another thing is it's abrupt right angle turn.
How can we see a marsh with near-symmetrical width and which makes an abrupt 90 degree turn and not think that something very unusual was at work here?
But suppose Burnt Ship Creek was carved by one or more sliding icebergs that broke free from the melting glacier and slid southward across the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls, NY. That would explain the existence of the creek perfectly. This explanation fits with what we see of the slope of the land caused by the underlying rock strata. The slope is to the south and west.
From Niagara Falls Blvd., it is fairly easy to see the downward slope of the ground going southward around 75th to 77th Sts. in Niagara Falls. Then, the upper rapids in the Niagara River just west of Grand Island is caused by the downward slope of the underlying rock strata going westward.
The sliding icebergs, wearing away the ground beneath them as they moved, slid across what is now the Niagara River and then abruptly switched direction when the primarly slope of the underlying ground went from southward to westward. This explains the 90 degree angle of the marsh.
We can see the underlying slope of the ground at Burnt Ship Creek by the fact that it's western, downstream, end is much more watery than it's beginning. We can also see that the northern shore of nearby Navy Island forms almost a straight line with the southern shore of Burnt Ship Creek. This is because it was worn away by the iceberg as it continued westward. I can think of no better explanation of why this creek exists.
WHY ARE THERE TWO FALLS AT NIAGARA?
An enduring mystery of Niagara Falls is why does all the water not go over one falls. There is a definite tilt of the underlying rock strata in the area to the southwest. This is why water goes over the main falls at Niagara, the Horseshoe Falls. So why does about 8% of the water that is set to go over the falls make a northward detour, seemingly against gravity, to form a second falls at Niagara, the American Falls. Actually two other falls are formed by this detour, the other is the smaller Bridal Veil Falls.
A glacier brings a virtual ocean of water to areas high on land where this volume of water would not otherwise be and when the glacier melts, this water has a permanent effect on the land. In addition, if there is a slope to the land when a glacier melts, massive chunks of ice will break off and slide along the slope. This happened extensively at Niagara Falls.
There is a westward and southward slope to the underlying rock strata in the area of Niagara Falls, USA and so secondary glaciation in the form of sliding icebergs at the end of the ice age was a factor in forming the falls as we see them today. The upper river from North Tonawanda down to the falls is the lakebed of the former Lake Tonawanda that existed for most of the time since the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago.
The reason that this was the lakebed is that it is at the low line of a southward slope to the land in the area and itself has a westward slope toward the falls. We can tell by the Niagara Falls Moraine, the high ground on the Canadian side around the falls that it was impacted by massive blocks of ice sliding across the westward slope, seen in the Upper Rapids just before the falls.
The southward slope, best seen from Niagara Falls Blvd. looking southward along the numbered streets in the 70s in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls is what deposited these icebergs from the melting glacier in the line that became the upper river after Lake Tonawanda drained.
Now, let's go back to Burnt Ship Creek. (Note-I am unsure where the name "Burnt Ship Creek" comes from. Presumably, in the days of wooden warships in the area, one ship fired hot shot into another).
I established that Burnt Ship Creek was formed by a massive iceberg that had slid down the southward slope in the 70s streets in LaSalle and then began sliding westward, toward what is now the falls, when it reached a point in which the slope was more westward than southward. This scraped away the ground along it's path and the result was Burnt Ship Creek, a wide marsh with a 90 degree angle, after Lake Tonawanda drained.
If the iceberg that formed Burnt Ship Creek had continued on it's course, it veers somewhat northward on it's westward course after it leaves the western end of Burnt Ship Creek, it will move along the course of the channel between Goat Island and the mainland that leads to the American Falls.
In some areas the general southwest slope of the underlying rock strata is more southward and in others, it is more westward. The route taken by this iceberg from Burnt Ship Creek to what is now the falls avoids the southward sloping areas so that the falls it caused to form results from a detour away from the main falls which seemingly defies gravity. The river was not there at the time, of course, so the iceberg continued westward to collide with the high ground on the Canadian side, where it finished melting.
The channel north of Goat Island leading to the American Falls has something in common with Burnt Ship Creek. Both get wider near their downstream, western ends. This can be explained by the fact that the iceberg that formed both was actually a mass of ice that was fragmenting and melting as it went along, eroding away the ground as it went, and thus spreading out. This formed a channel through which water later flowed from the main stretch of river and thus is why we have two falls, actually three, instead of just one.
Image from Google Earth
The sliding iceberg that formed Burnt Ship Creek continued westward to carve the channel through which water flows to the American Falls.
In a similar way, we could say that Goat Island (the land separating the two main falls) exists because the southward slope in the upper rapids, which is why the water above the falls is deeper on the Canadian side, kept such large chunks of ice moving westward away from it.
If we draw a straight line from the center of the wide marshy area through which Burnt Ship Creek flows at the point where it makes a 90 degree bend and continue the line, which represents the route of the sliding iceberg that formed both Burnt Ship Creek and the American Falls, as shown below:
The line passes exactly along the center of the western part of the wide marshy area around Burnt Ship Creek, seen in close-up below. The highway crossing the creek is the I-190.
This shows that both Burnt Ship Creek and the American Falls were formed by a sliding iceberg, at the end of the last ice age, as described here. The small islands just above the American Falls are formed of the ground that was left intact as the iceberg broke up.
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
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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.
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
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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.
Proof Of The Niagara Impact Craters
Today, we can see that the melting glaciers of Greenland, caused by global warming, are sliding into the sea. This ideally explains what happened at Niagara Falls at the end of the last ice age. The reason that the high ground on the Canadian side near the falls, the Niagara Falls Moraine, seems to be indented is that a large section of glacier broke loose in what is now Niagara Falls, NY, slid across the rock strata, which is decidedly tilted toward the southwest, and struck the moraine. This put a wide indentation in the moraine that we see today as the broad area of Queen Victoria Park. The bluff on which the Skylon is built is the moraine.
The focal point of the collision is, as described above, about where Table Rock House and the intersection of Fraser Hill with the Niagara Parkway are now. This mountainous slab of ice then fractured laterally and sent the massive slab hurtling to the ground that created the Niagara Impact Crater. We can best see the impact which resulted as the drop in elevation of Lundy's Lane, at Sylvia Place east of Portage Road/Main St.
In the section of Main St. from the Rainbow Bridge to Pine Ave. and beyond in Niagara Falls, NY, we can easily see how the ground is dramatically slanted toward where Prospect Park is now located. This formed a collection point for more ice sliding across the ground as the glaciers were melting. The breaking off of the slab of ice caused tremors that resulted in another massive slab breaking off and creating the Valley Way Impact Crater when it hit the ground.
The path that the main section of the glacier followed westward towards that impact can be seen in the valley that it forms on both sides of the casino in Niagara Falls, NY. Looking south on 4th St. towards Buffalo Ave is the south side of the valley. Looking northward along the numbered streets from 4th to 10th from Niagara St. shows the rise in elevation representing the northern side of the valley. This terrain displays the classic U-shape to the ground that a moving glacier leaves behind.
It can easily be seen how the downward slope of Niagara St. westward from Portage Rd. to the falls gave the sliding glacier it's speed which left such a great indentation when it impacted the Niagara Falls Moraine and caused the glacier to fracture laterally so that the slab broke off.
As proof of my hypothesis of the sliding glacier and the glacial impact crater, I would like to point out that the axes of the sliding glacier moving westward along what is now Niagara and Falls Sts. toward Prospect Park and the river forms a straight line with the focal point of the impact of the slab of ice that broke off the top of the glacier and formed the large glacial impact crater in Niagara Falls, Canada. The impact can be seen as the drop in elevation on Lundy's Lane, and it can be seen on a map how the site of the impact is in a straight line from the route of the sliding glacial ice on the U.S. side. The sliding berg of ice collided with, and indented, the Niagara Falls Moraine to create the broad terrace of Queen Victoria Park, and then the glacier later fractured laterally to form the Lundy's Lane Impact Crater.
The focal point of the impact is, as pointed out in this blog's posting on this subject, the sudden drop in the roads on Ferry St./Lundy's Lane at Sylvia Pl. in Niagara Falls, Canada. This drop is also seen on nearby Grey and Allendale Aves.
The principle is the same as striking soft ground with a golf club or sledge hammer at a low angle. The resulting crater will have a steep side opposite the direction of impact. The area of these sudden drops is in a direct straight line with the path of the sliding glacier across Niagara Falls, NY.
The focal point of the collision is, as described above, about where Table Rock House and the intersection of Fraser Hill with the Niagara Parkway are now. This mountainous slab of ice then fractured laterally and sent the massive slab hurtling to the ground that created the Niagara Impact Crater. We can best see the impact which resulted as the drop in elevation of Lundy's Lane, at Sylvia Place east of Portage Road/Main St.
In the section of Main St. from the Rainbow Bridge to Pine Ave. and beyond in Niagara Falls, NY, we can easily see how the ground is dramatically slanted toward where Prospect Park is now located. This formed a collection point for more ice sliding across the ground as the glaciers were melting. The breaking off of the slab of ice caused tremors that resulted in another massive slab breaking off and creating the Valley Way Impact Crater when it hit the ground.
The path that the main section of the glacier followed westward towards that impact can be seen in the valley that it forms on both sides of the casino in Niagara Falls, NY. Looking south on 4th St. towards Buffalo Ave is the south side of the valley. Looking northward along the numbered streets from 4th to 10th from Niagara St. shows the rise in elevation representing the northern side of the valley. This terrain displays the classic U-shape to the ground that a moving glacier leaves behind.
It can easily be seen how the downward slope of Niagara St. westward from Portage Rd. to the falls gave the sliding glacier it's speed which left such a great indentation when it impacted the Niagara Falls Moraine and caused the glacier to fracture laterally so that the slab broke off.
As proof of my hypothesis of the sliding glacier and the glacial impact crater, I would like to point out that the axes of the sliding glacier moving westward along what is now Niagara and Falls Sts. toward Prospect Park and the river forms a straight line with the focal point of the impact of the slab of ice that broke off the top of the glacier and formed the large glacial impact crater in Niagara Falls, Canada. The impact can be seen as the drop in elevation on Lundy's Lane, and it can be seen on a map how the site of the impact is in a straight line from the route of the sliding glacial ice on the U.S. side. The sliding berg of ice collided with, and indented, the Niagara Falls Moraine to create the broad terrace of Queen Victoria Park, and then the glacier later fractured laterally to form the Lundy's Lane Impact Crater.
The focal point of the impact is, as pointed out in this blog's posting on this subject, the sudden drop in the roads on Ferry St./Lundy's Lane at Sylvia Pl. in Niagara Falls, Canada. This drop is also seen on nearby Grey and Allendale Aves.
The principle is the same as striking soft ground with a golf club or sledge hammer at a low angle. The resulting crater will have a steep side opposite the direction of impact. The area of these sudden drops is in a direct straight line with the path of the sliding glacier across Niagara Falls, NY.
The Niagara Valley
The most important reason that Niagara Falls exists as it does today is, of course, the escarpment. The water in the vast upper Great Lakes watershed will inevitably find it's way to Lake Ontario and at some point must fall over the escarpment.
THE NIAGARA VALLEY
I have found what must be the next most important factor in the formation of Niagara Falls after the escarpment. I have named it the Niagara Valley. It is a wide valley in the underlying rock layers aligned roughly north-south. This valley is very old and is not easily visible today since it has been largely filled in by the Niagara Falls Moraine, the high ground on the Canadian side by the falls, and carved up by the Niagara River.
But this valley was the underlying factor in all that happened at Niagara Falls. This posting may actually be considered as the most important one about Niagara natural history because all of the other Niagara postings are about the effects of flowing water and moving glacial ice, but this one is about the underlying geology which shapes all else.
Here is the map link that I usually use. The straight-line section of the Lower Niagara River from the ninety degree angle at the falls north northeastward to where Bridge Street on the Canadian side and the Whirlpool Bridge is located runs along the low line of the Niagara Valley, which extends westward into Canada and eastward into the U.S.: www.maps.google.com .
The place that this old valley is most visible today is on Thorold Stone Rd. in Niagara Falls, Canada. If you go eastward, toward the river, on that road from the intersection with Dorchester Rd., you will reach a high point and then begin a long and gradual drop that reaches all the way down to the present Niagara Gorge. This is the western side of the valley.
A few miles to the southeast, on the American side, anywhere near the falls the southwestward slope of the rock strata is unmistakable. From the intersection of John B. Daly Blvd. and Rainbow Blvd., if you look westward along Rainbow Blvd. toward the falls, you will see another long and gradual drop, this time in the opposite direction. This is the eastern side of the valley. This valley was not carved by water at all but is along the underlying rock strata.
Another glimpse of the western side of the valley can be seen in the way that Lundy's Lane climbs higher west of the intersection with Portage Rd. in Niagara Falls, Canada. Although here, the valley has been covered by the Niagara Falls Moraine, which was deposited by a later glacier.
The upper rapids above the falls begin at the eastern edge of the slope of the Niagara Valley in the Niagara River. We know that these rapids are created by the same slope in the underlying rock that we see along Rainbow Blvd.
A large amount of soil and loose rock was deposited in the valley by an ice age glacier. This is what we now refer to as the Niagara Falls Moraine, and is seen as the high ground on the Canadian side of the falls, including the slope of Clifton Hill. The eastward part of the moraine was pushed in to it's present position by the falls by sliding fragments of the last glacier as it melted and broke apart. This moraine, and the Niagara River that made a northward turn when it collided with it, are the reasons that the valley is so difficult to discern today.
FORMATION OF THE NIAGARA VALLEY
To understand how the Niagara Valley, and thus the falls as they are today, formed we must look at the big picture of North America. The Appalachian system of mountains in the eastern USA was formed by the collision between what is now Africa and what is now North America, as described in the posting on the geology blog "All About The Appalachians". This long system includes the Allegheny, Blue Ridge, Catskill, Adirondack, Green and, White Mountains. It also includes the system of ridges in Tennessee and Kentucky that parallels it.
The Appalachians are much older than the Rockies in the western part of the continent so the collision that formed them happened long before the collision of the entire western hemisphere with the Pacific Plate. The collision that formed the Appalachians also forced up layers of rock strata adjacent to the mountains such as the Allegheny Plateau in New York and Pennsylvania.
Now, back to Niagara Falls and the underlying Niagara Valley. This valley includes the slant in the underlying rock strata to the southwest above the falls at about 20 feet (6 meters) per mile (1.5 km). This is what gives us the upper rapids and is why the water above the falls is deeper on the Canadian side.
The underlying Niagara Valley is most obvious here in it's contrast with the opposite slope of Thorold Stone Road. The southward element of the slope in the underlying rock above the falls is not a part of the Niagara Valley. The southward slope is a property of the escarpment itself and is visible in the numbered streets in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls if we look south from Niagara Falls Blvd. along the 70s numbered streets. This direct southward slope, with no westward slope element, means that the 70s streets, in Niagara Falls NY, are located eastward beyond the Niagara Valley.
The fracturing of the rock strata, as the pressure of the Appalachian collision met the Niagara Escarpment, was not perfectly neat. The resulting southwestward slope, the southward element of the slope is the result of the sawtooth shape of the escarpment and the westward element is the result of the Niagara Valley, is greatest near the falls, on the American side. But lesser westward slopes, the result of the Appalachian collision forming the Niagara Valley, can be seen well to the east in the landscape of Niagara Falls, NY.
There is actually a subtle boundary region where the primary underlying slope becomes southwestward instead of southward. If we look east on John Ave. from 66th St., we can see in the surface of the street the beginning of the westward slope that extends down to the falls. The subtle westward slope can also be seen in the parking lot of Home Depot on Builder's Way. The westward slope of Girard Avenue, between the Interstate 190 and 56th Street, is just barely perceptible. Closer in the direction of the falls, if we look westward along Pine Avenue from Hyde Park Boulevard, the westward slope becomes somewhat more perceptible. On Main Street, near the area of the falls, the westward slope of the Niagara Valley is very definite. Further north, the westward slope of Ontario Avenue is another place where we see the Niagara Valley.
The point of this is that this section of the lower Niagara River, below the falls, is aligned from south southwest to north northeast along exactly the same angle as are the Appalachian Mountains and ridges before the great curve of the collision front across Pennsylvania. Remember that this section of the river flows along the low line of the Niagara Valley. This can be easily seen if we look at a map of eastern North America alongside a map of Niagara Falls.
Thus, it is my conclusion that the continental collision which resulted in the Appalachian Mountains exerted tremendous force that caused a fracture in the rock strata at a distance and resulted in the formation of the Niagara Valley.
The Niagara Escarpment broke in two places , one on each side of it. The most clear break is the one on the side of the escarpment away from the collision front, at Short Hills Provincial Park near St. Catharines. On the opposite side of the escarpment is the break which forms the Niagara Valley. This break caused a shift in the terrain at right angles to the break at the Niagara Valley, which is why the Upper Niagara River shore of the city of Niagara Falls, NY forms a continuous line with the axis of the Decew Lakes near St. Catharines and the "breaking point" of the escarpment on it's opposite side. This is also why the Upper and Lower Niagara Rivers, above and below the falls, seems to form a perfect right angle. This should not seem unusual at all as the Niagara Region is really not far from the Allegheny Plateau that was created by the collision.
The river from the Horseshoe Falls to the Whirlpool Bridge represents the low point of the Niagara Valley. Water always seeks the lowest point and this is why this stretch of the lower river follows the course it does today. To get to the falls, water in the upper rapids is flowing down the east side of the Niagara Valley. Once the river passes the Whirlpool Bridge, it is past the end of the valley and it's course diverges.
THE HUMBER LINE AND THE NIAGARA VALLEY
Let's now turn to the place where the straight line section of the lower Niagara River curves to the west, along what is known as the Lower Niagara Rapids, toward the whirlpool in the Niagara River.
Remember in "All About The Appalachians", we saw how the geographical features created by this tectonic collision revolve around what I defined as the Humber Line, named for the valley across Toronto where it is most visible. The Humber Line is the line that I noticed extends from the "focal point" of the curve of the Appalachians, around the city of Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, through the long axis of the elongated Georgian Bay in Ontario. In the opposite direction from Harrisburg the Susquehanna River, which meanders around northeastern Pennsylvania before reaching Harrisburg, suddenly adheres to a straight line flow along the Humber Line after passing Harrisburg.
If we follow the line of the Humber Line through the general area of the Niagara River, we see that it forms the straight line of the easternmost shore of Lake Erie, from Blasdell to downtown Buffalo. We then see that the Humber Line forms the straight line of the southwestern shore of Navy Island, the uninhabited Canadian island in the upper Niagara River. Notice that this shoreline is a perfect continuation of the easternmost shore of Lake Erie.
We then see that the Humber Line intersects the Niagara Valley. In fact, the Niagara Valley ends at the Humber Line, where the lower Niagara River ceases to be a straight line and curves along the lower rapids. The Humber Line then appears along the northern shore of Lake Ontario at Humber Bay, in Toronto. The well-known drop in elevation along east-west streets to the west of downtown Toronto, such as Bloor Street, represents how the land is elevated on the east side of the Humber Line due to the difference in pressure as the collision front of the Appalachians shifted direction across Pennsylvania.
(Note-I don't want to digress too much here, but the reason that this shift caused by the change in direction of the Appalachian collision front is so well-defined along this line is that the Humber Line was actually once a longitudinal line of magma emergence when the north pole was migrating across Canada, from it's former position at what is now the Great Basin of the western U.S. to it's present position, as described in "The Story of Planet Earth" on the geology blog).
The reason that the Niagara Valley ends at the Humber Line, at the beginning of the Lower Rapids, is that the break in the structure of the Niagara Escarpment which formed the Niagara Valley only took place to the west of the Humber Line. To the west of the Humber Line, the pressure on the land from the south increased as the collision front of the Appalachians changed direction as it continued eastward. To the east of the Humber Line, the force was enough to simply shift the Niagara Escarpment to the north.
This meant that there were fewer special effects on the land, such as this Niagara Valley, than there were to the east of the Humber Line. To the west of the Humber Line, there was not quite enough force to shift the entire escarpment so the force went into creating various special effects. The shifting of the escarpment itself created a special effect, that can easily be seen on a map, as the smooth bulge of land extending out into Lake Ontario between the cities of St. Catharines and Rochester, as we saw in the posting "The Niagara Escarpment Bulge And The Appalachian Collision".
Another such "special effect" of the pressure against the Niagara Escarpment west of the Humber Line is the rocky ridge which extends to the west of the town of Fonthill, Ontario, and which was described in "All About The Appalachians" on the geology blog, in the section "The Appalachian Collision And The Niagara Escarpment". Just as the Niagara Valley only continues until it meets the Humber Line, this rocky ridge only continues eastward until it meets the "breaking point" of the escarpment, which is at Short Hills Provincial Park, near St. Catharines. The Break in the escarpment, caused by building pressure along the Appalachian collision front to the south, should logically have taken place right at the Humber Line. The reason that it didn't is that the rock strata has a structure of it's own and is not "fluid". So, the break in the escarpment took place just west of the Humber Line, at Short Hills.
There have been two rivers across the Niagara area, from Lake Erie to Ontario, the present Niagara River and the St. David's River in the warm period before the last ice age. The St. David's River flowed from what is now Dufferin Islands, on the Canadian shore of the Niagara River, across what is now Goat Island. The sections that are common to both rivers are the lower rapids and the whirlpool.
The St. David's River flowed through what is now the whirlpool and met the escarpment at the Ontario village of St. David's, hence it's name. Along the QEW Highway (Queen Elizabeth Way), west of Stanley Avenue, there is a wide area of a lower elevation adjacent to the village of St. David's which is a remnant of this former river before it was mostly filled in by soil and loose rock carried along by the glaciers of the last ice age.
But notice that this St. David's River followed the Humber Line exactly from the point where it encountered the line in what is now downtown Niagara Falls, NY. The St. David's River route from the whirlpool at the village of St. David's is right along the Humber Line. The St. David's River followed the Humber Line, the lower Niagara River follows the Niagara Valley which ends at the Humber Line. The whirlpool formed when the Niagara River's flow and falls excavated the loose fill of the former St. David's River, and this directed the Niagara River in another direction so that it does not follow the course of the Humber Line.
RIDGES WITHIN THE NIAGARA VALLEY
One other notable feature of the area is the so-called Lyell-Johnson Ridge. This is a low, rounded ridge that cuts directly across the valley. When the falls, eroding it's way southward, about 3,500 years ago cut through the high ground at Hubbard's Point, Lake Tonawanda began to drain and Niagara Falls as we know it began to take shape.
This ridge is visible along River Rd. in Niagara Falls, Canada extending south from the Whirlpool Bridge with the high point at Eastwood Cr. It is also visible on the American side on Whirlpool St., as you pass Spruce and Cedar Aves.
Another such ridge can be seen in Niagara Falls, Canada on Stanley Ave. If you head south from Bridge St., you will go over the same type of low and rounded ridge.
These two ridges are part of the rock structure, and are not glacial in origin. They can in no way be explained in terms of the Niagara River. But, if we consider the Humber Line, it is easy to see that both ridges are immediately west of it and, like the Niagara Valley which they are within, terminate before the Humber Line. There are no such ridges to the east of the Humber Line. These two ridges are explained as a part of this scenario with the Appalachian collision. They are reeves in the rock strata that were formed by the same pressures as the Niagara Valley, and are congruent to the rocky ridge west of Fonthill.
(Note-this Lyell-Johnson Ridge also helps explain why the embayment at Dufferin Islands, that I have discussed in other Niagara postings such as "Dufferin Islands And The Former St. David's River", is where it is. The embayment is a former whirlpool from the previous warm inter-glacial period. It is located as far west as it can be due to the underlying slope of the rock strata along the eastern side of the Niagara Valley but it could not be any further west or else it would be too low for water from it to be able to cross the Lyell-Johnson Ridge on it's way northward to the escarpment).
One other such ridge, which is within the Niagara Valley and formed by the same pressure from the Appalachian collision as it, is what some natural historians refer to as "Niagara Island". This is not an actual island but is an area of a little higher elevation in the rock strata right downtown in Niagara Falls, NY near the falls. The large hotel with a curved front brick facade, John's Hotel Niagara, is built on this elevation. The reason for referring to it as an island is that it was briefly an island when the former Lake Tonawanda drained after the falls, cutting it's way backward to it's present location, cut through the Lyell-Johnson Ridge about 3500 years ago.
THE NIAGARA VALLEY
I have found what must be the next most important factor in the formation of Niagara Falls after the escarpment. I have named it the Niagara Valley. It is a wide valley in the underlying rock layers aligned roughly north-south. This valley is very old and is not easily visible today since it has been largely filled in by the Niagara Falls Moraine, the high ground on the Canadian side by the falls, and carved up by the Niagara River.
But this valley was the underlying factor in all that happened at Niagara Falls. This posting may actually be considered as the most important one about Niagara natural history because all of the other Niagara postings are about the effects of flowing water and moving glacial ice, but this one is about the underlying geology which shapes all else.
Here is the map link that I usually use. The straight-line section of the Lower Niagara River from the ninety degree angle at the falls north northeastward to where Bridge Street on the Canadian side and the Whirlpool Bridge is located runs along the low line of the Niagara Valley, which extends westward into Canada and eastward into the U.S.: www.maps.google.com .
The place that this old valley is most visible today is on Thorold Stone Rd. in Niagara Falls, Canada. If you go eastward, toward the river, on that road from the intersection with Dorchester Rd., you will reach a high point and then begin a long and gradual drop that reaches all the way down to the present Niagara Gorge. This is the western side of the valley.
A few miles to the southeast, on the American side, anywhere near the falls the southwestward slope of the rock strata is unmistakable. From the intersection of John B. Daly Blvd. and Rainbow Blvd., if you look westward along Rainbow Blvd. toward the falls, you will see another long and gradual drop, this time in the opposite direction. This is the eastern side of the valley. This valley was not carved by water at all but is along the underlying rock strata.
Another glimpse of the western side of the valley can be seen in the way that Lundy's Lane climbs higher west of the intersection with Portage Rd. in Niagara Falls, Canada. Although here, the valley has been covered by the Niagara Falls Moraine, which was deposited by a later glacier.
The upper rapids above the falls begin at the eastern edge of the slope of the Niagara Valley in the Niagara River. We know that these rapids are created by the same slope in the underlying rock that we see along Rainbow Blvd.
A large amount of soil and loose rock was deposited in the valley by an ice age glacier. This is what we now refer to as the Niagara Falls Moraine, and is seen as the high ground on the Canadian side of the falls, including the slope of Clifton Hill. The eastward part of the moraine was pushed in to it's present position by the falls by sliding fragments of the last glacier as it melted and broke apart. This moraine, and the Niagara River that made a northward turn when it collided with it, are the reasons that the valley is so difficult to discern today.
FORMATION OF THE NIAGARA VALLEY
To understand how the Niagara Valley, and thus the falls as they are today, formed we must look at the big picture of North America. The Appalachian system of mountains in the eastern USA was formed by the collision between what is now Africa and what is now North America, as described in the posting on the geology blog "All About The Appalachians". This long system includes the Allegheny, Blue Ridge, Catskill, Adirondack, Green and, White Mountains. It also includes the system of ridges in Tennessee and Kentucky that parallels it.
The Appalachians are much older than the Rockies in the western part of the continent so the collision that formed them happened long before the collision of the entire western hemisphere with the Pacific Plate. The collision that formed the Appalachians also forced up layers of rock strata adjacent to the mountains such as the Allegheny Plateau in New York and Pennsylvania.
Now, back to Niagara Falls and the underlying Niagara Valley. This valley includes the slant in the underlying rock strata to the southwest above the falls at about 20 feet (6 meters) per mile (1.5 km). This is what gives us the upper rapids and is why the water above the falls is deeper on the Canadian side.
The underlying Niagara Valley is most obvious here in it's contrast with the opposite slope of Thorold Stone Road. The southward element of the slope in the underlying rock above the falls is not a part of the Niagara Valley. The southward slope is a property of the escarpment itself and is visible in the numbered streets in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls if we look south from Niagara Falls Blvd. along the 70s numbered streets. This direct southward slope, with no westward slope element, means that the 70s streets, in Niagara Falls NY, are located eastward beyond the Niagara Valley.
The fracturing of the rock strata, as the pressure of the Appalachian collision met the Niagara Escarpment, was not perfectly neat. The resulting southwestward slope, the southward element of the slope is the result of the sawtooth shape of the escarpment and the westward element is the result of the Niagara Valley, is greatest near the falls, on the American side. But lesser westward slopes, the result of the Appalachian collision forming the Niagara Valley, can be seen well to the east in the landscape of Niagara Falls, NY.
There is actually a subtle boundary region where the primary underlying slope becomes southwestward instead of southward. If we look east on John Ave. from 66th St., we can see in the surface of the street the beginning of the westward slope that extends down to the falls. The subtle westward slope can also be seen in the parking lot of Home Depot on Builder's Way. The westward slope of Girard Avenue, between the Interstate 190 and 56th Street, is just barely perceptible. Closer in the direction of the falls, if we look westward along Pine Avenue from Hyde Park Boulevard, the westward slope becomes somewhat more perceptible. On Main Street, near the area of the falls, the westward slope of the Niagara Valley is very definite. Further north, the westward slope of Ontario Avenue is another place where we see the Niagara Valley.
The point of this is that this section of the lower Niagara River, below the falls, is aligned from south southwest to north northeast along exactly the same angle as are the Appalachian Mountains and ridges before the great curve of the collision front across Pennsylvania. Remember that this section of the river flows along the low line of the Niagara Valley. This can be easily seen if we look at a map of eastern North America alongside a map of Niagara Falls.
Thus, it is my conclusion that the continental collision which resulted in the Appalachian Mountains exerted tremendous force that caused a fracture in the rock strata at a distance and resulted in the formation of the Niagara Valley.
The Niagara Escarpment broke in two places , one on each side of it. The most clear break is the one on the side of the escarpment away from the collision front, at Short Hills Provincial Park near St. Catharines. On the opposite side of the escarpment is the break which forms the Niagara Valley. This break caused a shift in the terrain at right angles to the break at the Niagara Valley, which is why the Upper Niagara River shore of the city of Niagara Falls, NY forms a continuous line with the axis of the Decew Lakes near St. Catharines and the "breaking point" of the escarpment on it's opposite side. This is also why the Upper and Lower Niagara Rivers, above and below the falls, seems to form a perfect right angle. This should not seem unusual at all as the Niagara Region is really not far from the Allegheny Plateau that was created by the collision.
The river from the Horseshoe Falls to the Whirlpool Bridge represents the low point of the Niagara Valley. Water always seeks the lowest point and this is why this stretch of the lower river follows the course it does today. To get to the falls, water in the upper rapids is flowing down the east side of the Niagara Valley. Once the river passes the Whirlpool Bridge, it is past the end of the valley and it's course diverges.
THE HUMBER LINE AND THE NIAGARA VALLEY
Let's now turn to the place where the straight line section of the lower Niagara River curves to the west, along what is known as the Lower Niagara Rapids, toward the whirlpool in the Niagara River.
Remember in "All About The Appalachians", we saw how the geographical features created by this tectonic collision revolve around what I defined as the Humber Line, named for the valley across Toronto where it is most visible. The Humber Line is the line that I noticed extends from the "focal point" of the curve of the Appalachians, around the city of Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, through the long axis of the elongated Georgian Bay in Ontario. In the opposite direction from Harrisburg the Susquehanna River, which meanders around northeastern Pennsylvania before reaching Harrisburg, suddenly adheres to a straight line flow along the Humber Line after passing Harrisburg.
If we follow the line of the Humber Line through the general area of the Niagara River, we see that it forms the straight line of the easternmost shore of Lake Erie, from Blasdell to downtown Buffalo. We then see that the Humber Line forms the straight line of the southwestern shore of Navy Island, the uninhabited Canadian island in the upper Niagara River. Notice that this shoreline is a perfect continuation of the easternmost shore of Lake Erie.
We then see that the Humber Line intersects the Niagara Valley. In fact, the Niagara Valley ends at the Humber Line, where the lower Niagara River ceases to be a straight line and curves along the lower rapids. The Humber Line then appears along the northern shore of Lake Ontario at Humber Bay, in Toronto. The well-known drop in elevation along east-west streets to the west of downtown Toronto, such as Bloor Street, represents how the land is elevated on the east side of the Humber Line due to the difference in pressure as the collision front of the Appalachians shifted direction across Pennsylvania.
(Note-I don't want to digress too much here, but the reason that this shift caused by the change in direction of the Appalachian collision front is so well-defined along this line is that the Humber Line was actually once a longitudinal line of magma emergence when the north pole was migrating across Canada, from it's former position at what is now the Great Basin of the western U.S. to it's present position, as described in "The Story of Planet Earth" on the geology blog).
The reason that the Niagara Valley ends at the Humber Line, at the beginning of the Lower Rapids, is that the break in the structure of the Niagara Escarpment which formed the Niagara Valley only took place to the west of the Humber Line. To the west of the Humber Line, the pressure on the land from the south increased as the collision front of the Appalachians changed direction as it continued eastward. To the east of the Humber Line, the force was enough to simply shift the Niagara Escarpment to the north.
This meant that there were fewer special effects on the land, such as this Niagara Valley, than there were to the east of the Humber Line. To the west of the Humber Line, there was not quite enough force to shift the entire escarpment so the force went into creating various special effects. The shifting of the escarpment itself created a special effect, that can easily be seen on a map, as the smooth bulge of land extending out into Lake Ontario between the cities of St. Catharines and Rochester, as we saw in the posting "The Niagara Escarpment Bulge And The Appalachian Collision".
Another such "special effect" of the pressure against the Niagara Escarpment west of the Humber Line is the rocky ridge which extends to the west of the town of Fonthill, Ontario, and which was described in "All About The Appalachians" on the geology blog, in the section "The Appalachian Collision And The Niagara Escarpment". Just as the Niagara Valley only continues until it meets the Humber Line, this rocky ridge only continues eastward until it meets the "breaking point" of the escarpment, which is at Short Hills Provincial Park, near St. Catharines. The Break in the escarpment, caused by building pressure along the Appalachian collision front to the south, should logically have taken place right at the Humber Line. The reason that it didn't is that the rock strata has a structure of it's own and is not "fluid". So, the break in the escarpment took place just west of the Humber Line, at Short Hills.
There have been two rivers across the Niagara area, from Lake Erie to Ontario, the present Niagara River and the St. David's River in the warm period before the last ice age. The St. David's River flowed from what is now Dufferin Islands, on the Canadian shore of the Niagara River, across what is now Goat Island. The sections that are common to both rivers are the lower rapids and the whirlpool.
The St. David's River flowed through what is now the whirlpool and met the escarpment at the Ontario village of St. David's, hence it's name. Along the QEW Highway (Queen Elizabeth Way), west of Stanley Avenue, there is a wide area of a lower elevation adjacent to the village of St. David's which is a remnant of this former river before it was mostly filled in by soil and loose rock carried along by the glaciers of the last ice age.
But notice that this St. David's River followed the Humber Line exactly from the point where it encountered the line in what is now downtown Niagara Falls, NY. The St. David's River route from the whirlpool at the village of St. David's is right along the Humber Line. The St. David's River followed the Humber Line, the lower Niagara River follows the Niagara Valley which ends at the Humber Line. The whirlpool formed when the Niagara River's flow and falls excavated the loose fill of the former St. David's River, and this directed the Niagara River in another direction so that it does not follow the course of the Humber Line.
RIDGES WITHIN THE NIAGARA VALLEY
One other notable feature of the area is the so-called Lyell-Johnson Ridge. This is a low, rounded ridge that cuts directly across the valley. When the falls, eroding it's way southward, about 3,500 years ago cut through the high ground at Hubbard's Point, Lake Tonawanda began to drain and Niagara Falls as we know it began to take shape.
This ridge is visible along River Rd. in Niagara Falls, Canada extending south from the Whirlpool Bridge with the high point at Eastwood Cr. It is also visible on the American side on Whirlpool St., as you pass Spruce and Cedar Aves.
Another such ridge can be seen in Niagara Falls, Canada on Stanley Ave. If you head south from Bridge St., you will go over the same type of low and rounded ridge.
These two ridges are part of the rock structure, and are not glacial in origin. They can in no way be explained in terms of the Niagara River. But, if we consider the Humber Line, it is easy to see that both ridges are immediately west of it and, like the Niagara Valley which they are within, terminate before the Humber Line. There are no such ridges to the east of the Humber Line. These two ridges are explained as a part of this scenario with the Appalachian collision. They are reeves in the rock strata that were formed by the same pressures as the Niagara Valley, and are congruent to the rocky ridge west of Fonthill.
(Note-this Lyell-Johnson Ridge also helps explain why the embayment at Dufferin Islands, that I have discussed in other Niagara postings such as "Dufferin Islands And The Former St. David's River", is where it is. The embayment is a former whirlpool from the previous warm inter-glacial period. It is located as far west as it can be due to the underlying slope of the rock strata along the eastern side of the Niagara Valley but it could not be any further west or else it would be too low for water from it to be able to cross the Lyell-Johnson Ridge on it's way northward to the escarpment).
One other such ridge, which is within the Niagara Valley and formed by the same pressure from the Appalachian collision as it, is what some natural historians refer to as "Niagara Island". This is not an actual island but is an area of a little higher elevation in the rock strata right downtown in Niagara Falls, NY near the falls. The large hotel with a curved front brick facade, John's Hotel Niagara, is built on this elevation. The reason for referring to it as an island is that it was briefly an island when the former Lake Tonawanda drained after the falls, cutting it's way backward to it's present location, cut through the Lyell-Johnson Ridge about 3500 years ago.
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