THE HISTORY OF DEVILS LAKE, WISCONSIN 365 



or if the ice was thicker,' and both postulates are reasonable, the 

 time required to fill the basin would have been less. 



The foregoing figures may be roughly checked by an estimate of 

 the amount of material deposited by the glacial waters. The 6 

 miles of ice edge which drained into Steinke Lake furnished water 

 enough to deposit over 2\ billion cubic feet of debris; in the Peck 

 basin water running from | mile of ice front deposited at least 142 

 million cubic feet of debris; it therefore seems safe to assume that 

 over 1 1 miles of ice edge furnished over 7^ billion cubic feet of water. 

 The Devils Lake gap between the two moraine dams contains over 

 2 billion cubic feet of debris (10,000 feet in lengthX 1,000 feet in 

 widthX283 feet in depth) and most of this must have come in the 

 water from the two short stretches of glacier to the north and 

 southeast, the water from the Steinke and Peck basins doubtless 

 having been essentially clear. 



It is not necessary to go farther to warrant the assumption that 

 Devils Lake must have risen during the glacial epoch until it 

 reached an outlet. On the edges of the basin there are only four 

 low points: (1) over the terminal moraine east of the south end of 

 the lake, (2) over or around the west edge of the moraine north of 

 the lake, (3) at the head of the south fork of Messenger's Creek, 

 (4) at the head of the north fork of Messenger's Creek. If the 

 openings to the east and north be considered to have been blocked 

 by the ice, as they doubtless were during the glacial occupancy, 

 the lowest outlet available was between the head of the north fork 

 of Messenger's Creek and the head of a valley tributary to the east 

 fork of Skillett's Creek, where the altitude is between 1,180 and 

 1,200 feet A.T. 



Salisbury and Atwood 1 found evidence that the glacial lake 

 stood 90 feet higher than the present lake, by finding erratic, iceberg- 

 floated bowlders in the talus on the west bluff of the lake at altitudes 

 of 1,050 feet. Theorizing that the lake must have stood even higher 

 than this, that it must have had an outlet, and that icebergs would 

 float toward, and strand in, such an outlet, the writer has made 



1 R. D. Salisbury and W. W. Atwood, Bull. No. 5, Wis. Geol. and Nat. Hist. Surv., 

 P. *33- 



