The Sanborn Valley And The North Tonawanda Moraine

There is a glacial moraine that I have found in the City of North Tonawanda, not far from Niagara Falls. It was formed in a way similar to that of the Portage Ridge and in the same way is low and rounded because it spent about 8,000 years under the waters of Lake Tonawanda.

It's origin lies in the stretch of land between the village of Sanborn and the Niagara Escarpment to it's north. If we go north from Saunders Settlement Road along Townline Road, it is clear that we are climbing a gradual slope. This slope is a property of the escarpment and can also be seen on Baer Road, parallel and to the east of Townline Road. At the end of the last ice age, tremendous bergs of ice broke loose from the melting glacier and slid down this slope just as they were doing in Niagara Falls.

Along a certain stretch of the escarpment here, the slope was steeper than in adjacent areas. This caused the sliding ice to form a valley that I will name the "Sanborn Valley" since I can see no references to it in any other writing on the natural history of the area.

The sides of the Sanborn Valley are easy to see. The eastern side of the valley is represented by the sudden increase in the elevation of Saunders Settlement Road just east of Baer Road. The western side of the valley can be seen along two main roads, on Saunders Settlement Road just west of the village of Sanborn and the increase in elevation on Lockport Road just west of Ward Road (called Buffalo Street further north in Sanborn).

From Lockport Road, just west of Ward Road, it is clear that we are looking over this valley while looking eastward. The higher elevation on Saunders Settlement Road west of Sanborn is itself a ridge of soil forced outward by the moving wall of ice that formed the Sanborn Valley.

Niagara County Community College is built toward the western side of this broad and shallow valley. From the westernmost parking lot at the college, it is easy to see that it is on higher ground than the rest of the college. Inside the college, there are two drops in elevation going eastward. One is in the C Building Annex and the other is in the main hallway west of the cafeteria.

A good place to traverse the valley is on Raymond Road between Baer and Hoover Roads. The lowest point of the valley is not far east of Hoover Road, meaning that it is fairly symmetrical.

The sliding wall of icebergs that formed the Sanborn Valley pushed up a wall of soil that formed a secondary glacial moraine similar in nature to the Portage Ridge in Niagara Falls. I will call the moraine the "North Tonawanda Moraine". It is to be found along Robinson Street in the southern portion of the City of North Tonawanda.

If we drive along Robinson Street from the Twin Cities Memorial Highway, we see that there is a gradual increase in elevation going west along the street. Looking southward on the side streets off Robinson Street, such as Niagara and Falconer Streets, we see that there is an increase in the elevation of the land. This elevation disappears as we get closer to the main streets of downtown North Tonawanda, such as Oliver Street, but we see it again if we look northward along North Marion Street from Robinson Street.

Looking at a larger scale map, we see that if we follow the Sanborn Valley in a straight line from it's edges, this is where it ends up. Like the Portage Ridge in Niagara Falls, this moraine is rounded and spread out in comparison to the sharpness it must once have had simply because it spend around 8,000 years under the waters of Lake Tonawanda. I think it is possible that the moraine was deposited here because there was no more southward slope to the land to get the wall of ice to slide further.

This process was not neat as I may be making it seem. I notice that several small moraines were left behind higher in the slope and did not make it all the way to North Tonawanda. On Baer Road near Sanborn, just north of Human Road, there is a section where the gradual southward slope is interrupted by a rise in elevation before going back to a slope if we are driving southward. This is a mass of soil that was deposited here and went no further.

There are also such minor moraines on Hoover Road, on Ward Road south of Lockport Road and in Sanborn itself, with it's high point around the intersection of Ward Road/Buffalo Street and Niagara Street.