656 H. L. ALLING GLACIAL LAKES OF CENTRAL ADIRONDACK^ 



lake was taken, and along the West Branch of the Ausable River (espe- 

 cially where the Lake Placid-Keene highway crosses) the terraces are 

 splendidly developed and very impressive. 



The Wilmington Notch is regarded as having been the connecting link 

 between the Lake Placid and the Keene Valley districts. This hypothesis 

 is supported by the presence of accordant terraces both east and west of 

 the Notch. How else could the waters of the two areas have been con- 

 fluent? 



The most probable outlet of the lake was to the west. The flow, it 

 would seem, was through the Newman pass, through which the Delaware 

 and Hudson Bailroad now runs, the ice having retreated northward since 

 the South Meadows stage sufficiently to allow flow north of Ampersand 

 Mountain. The possibility that the fault pass containing Chapel Pond, 

 on the eastern edge of the Mount Marcy quadrangle, or the Spruce Hill 

 pass to the north of it, acted as outlets to the east during the last stages 

 of Newman Lake is rather doubtful, but not impossible. If either one 

 of these passes did open up, it resulted in the reversal of the direction of 

 the drainage and brought about a second phase of the lake. 



Saranac glacial waters (altitude, 1,450 to 1,600 feet).— In 1897 F. B. 

 Taylor 13 published a short paper describing "Lake Adirondack." Mr. 

 Taylor observed terraces in the Saranac region at altitudes ranging from 

 1,400 to 1,600 feet. He believed that the lake existed by virtue of an 

 ice-dam to the north. He says in part : 



"It is not certain, but seems likely, that at the greatest extent this lake in- 

 cluded the valleys of both the east and west forks of the Ausable River. This 

 would give it quite an irregular shape with three expanded parts. For this I 

 propose the name 'Lake Adirondack.' 



"Nearly all the modern lakes in the central area of the mountains lie in 

 basins only slightly depressed below this plain, which is between 1,400 and 

 1,600 feet in altitude." 



Terraces are exhibited around Clifford Falls, up Styles Brook, where 

 a wave-cut cliff was found, and in Keene Valley, especially between Baxter 

 and Spread Eagle Mountains. In the Johns Brook Valley a. terrace at 

 1,450 feet forms the site of a summer hotel. 



The figures the writer has obtained for this series of glacial sand plains, 

 for no single lake level could have produced such a wide range, are 1,450 

 to 1,600 feet, which agree fairly well with Mr. Taylor's figures. Pro- 

 fessor Fairchild suggested that the drainage was westward and finally 

 south, following a course close to the encircling ice-front on the west of 

 the Adirondacks and draining into glacial lakes in the Black River Valley, 



13 F. B. Taylor : Lake Adirondack : Am. Geol., vol. 19, 1897, p. 394. 



