281 
The physical force which most likely turned the current of the Kanka- 
kee into the channel of the Dowagiae was an ice gorge, forming seven 
miles below South Bend, where a jutting point from the Michigan moraine 
extends out into the valley proper, two miles and a half, in an almost 
transverse direction, and known as Crum’s Point. Just below this point 
we find an ancient flood plain two miles wide, which was supplied with 
overflow water from the Michigan basin, and which entirely subsided 
when the Michigan waters receded from the rim of its basin. This valley 
is drained by a small meandering stream, known as Grapevine Creek, the 
rudiment of a mighty glacial stream. Strong and well-pronounced evi- 
dences of an ice gorge or dam haying formed at Crum’s Point, and ex- 
tending up the river to the mouth of the Dowagiac, are yet plainly visible, 
from the scouring, leveling and erosion of the morainic hills on the south, 
and a chain of lakes, and lake beds on the north, which are connected by 
a gorge through the point with the glacial stream mentioned above. And 
also at the head of the ice dam which passed well up above the mouth 
of the Dowagiac, where the waters pouring around it into the Dowagiac 
Valley excavated an interrupted channel, or chain of depression. These 
depressions are linear, extending from northwest to southeast, being from 
one-fourth to three-fourths of a mile long, twenty to forty feet deep, and 
from two hundred to six hundred yards wide, with sharp and well-defined 
banks. They all show evidences of having been filled with water for a long 
period of time. All have become dry except the lower two, which contain 
from twenty to thirty feet of water at present. This channel or chain of 
depressions extends from one mile north of South Bend southeasterly to 
within one mile of Mishawaka, a distance of four miles and a half, as 
shown on the accompanying diagram. When the ice dam gave way, the 
waters abandoned their circuitous routes and resumed their old channels, 
a part of them at this time taking the route down the Kankakee, and a 
part of them up the Dowagiaec Valley, the fall the latter way being three 
and a half times greater than the former, a channel was soon eroded 
sufficiently to carry the entire volume of water. <A bluff twelve to four- 
teen feet high, which commenced in the form of a sandbar, the sediment 
for which was supplied by what is known as Wenger’s Creek, extending 
in a diagonal direction across the Kankakee bed, and parallel to the new 
current, until it reached the opposite bank, when the Kankakee Valley 
was sealed forever, 
