360 ARTHUR C. TROWBRIDGE 



ice edge on the south. Short arms or bays projected east toward 

 Sauk Point and north into the narrow loop of the ice edge. As 

 discovered by Salisbury and Atwood, the lowest point in the basin 

 of this extinct lake during the occupancy of the ice, and hence the 

 head of the outlet of the lake, was at the extreme northwest corner 

 of the lake a few rods across the Merrimac Road west of the home 

 of Julius Steinke. The bottom of this outlet is at approximately 

 1,250 feet A.T., and as the outlet is broad and shallow, it may be 

 assumed that the level of the lake was little if any above 1,260. 

 The water from this lake flowed westward along the front of the 

 ice toward Devils Lake. 



The materials now occupying the site of this extinct lake are 

 lacustrine silts, sands, and gravels, finely divided near the middle 

 and coarser around the borders, and coarser at the surface than in 

 the bottoms of deep cuts or borings. The maximum depth of the 

 original lake is not known, but a well on the north side of the flat 

 at the house next west of the schoolhouse, whose site is at 1,260 

 on lacustrine material, penetrates 202 feet of what appears to be 

 lacustrine material, without reaching rock. This indicates that 

 the original lake was at least 200 feet deep, and that the 200 feet 

 of debris deposited in it was sufficient to fill the lake basin by the 

 time of the retreat of the ice. 



From the Steinke Lake the water drained westward into a small 

 pocket or basin having a flat bottom. In late years this little plain 

 has been known locally as the Peck flat. It is an area of perhaps 

 80 acres, bordering the terminal moraine on the north and sloping 

 gently and getting narrower to the south. On the west, east, and 

 south there are high hills of quartzite, but there is a break in the 

 rim of the basin at its southwest corner, through which drainage 

 is free to flow south and west to the north end of Devils Lake. The 

 width and depth of this valley, the hardness of the quartzite which 

 forms its walls and bottom, and the small size and intermittent 

 character of the stream which drains it, when compared with the 

 post-Glacial valleys of Skillett's Creek and the Wisconsin River, 

 show that this outlet to Peck flat is pre-Glacial. Yet when all 

 available authentic well-records are considered, it is clear that 

 glacial waters could not have flowed at first through this outlet 



