GLACIAL WATERS IN CENTRAL NEW YORK 



53 



to have held large masses of stagnant and possibly drift-buried 

 ice, and the two sections of the valley lie so transverse to the 

 direction of ice movement that they could readily entrap the edge 

 of the waning ice sheet. This is not a violent nor unreasonable 

 hypothesis, and it offers a simple and apparently the only way 

 out of the dilemma, unless the Pleistocene history of the region 

 is much more complex than outlined in this writing. 



Lake Dana 



The sub-Warren waters have been named hyper-Iroquois for the 

 reason that they had the same ultimate escape as the Iroquois 

 waters and were tending to the Iroquois level. The great canyons 

 in the Syracuse region should have held the lake waters at certain 

 levels for sufficient time, it would seem, to have produced recog- 

 nizable shore features in central New York. However, the only 

 plane of the hyper-Iroquois waters which has been found is that of 

 Lake Dana [title 22 and pi. 2, 3!, which has throughout central New 

 York the quite uniform altitude of 700 feet [pi. 2, 33]. 



The only strong channel in the eastern district which could today 

 hold the waters at near this level seems to be the Marcellus-Cedar_ 

 vale canyon. To freely reach this outlet the waters must have 

 had access to the Mareellus (Ninemile creek) valley from the north. 

 Confirmation of this relation is found in the hight and form of the 

 erosion at Lime Ridge, east of the head of the Gulf canyon and 3 

 miles northwest of Mareellus village. Under about 800 feet the 

 limestone scarp is deeply cut into benches and channels which 

 curve around the slope into the Mareellus valley. It would appear 

 that when the waters of the lowering Warren fell away from the 

 intake of the Gulf channel they flowed around the salient at Lime 

 Ledge, and that they continued to occupy the Mareellus valley and 

 the Cedarvale channel. This waterflow implies that the ice front 

 had here a trend somewhat northwest by southeast; and this rela- 

 tion seems probable, since the drumlins indicate that during the 

 last drumlin-making episode a lobe of the ice pushed to the south- 

 east over the depression of Onondaga lake and Syracuse. 



With the down-draining of the hyper-Iroquois water below about 

 700 feet, the intake of the Cedarvale canyon, the only escape was 

 on the north slopes of Howlet hill and Split Rock and below that 

 hight these slopes must have been water-swept the second time; 

 and any moraine left there by the readvanced ice should be looked 

 for above that altitude. 



