328 



Report of the State Geologist. 



rock-bottom. Between the end of the breakwater and a point opposite the 

 Lehigh docks, the distance from the surface of the lake to bed-rock was from 

 fifty-three to sixty-one feet. Sixteen hundred feet further on, the bottom was 

 seventy-one and one-half feet below the surface, with a rise to fifty-nine feet 

 within two stations. The deepest depression lies near Stony Point, where the 

 rock was seventy-seven feet from the surface. Beyond this the rook rises 

 quite abruptly, being only eleven feet from the surface at the last station near 

 the shore. The lake charts show a depression in the lake bottom nearly 

 opposite the Lehigh docks, which extends about 20,000 feet westerly into the 

 lake. Along this, the water is about a fathom deeper than on either side. 

 This depression is about 4,800 feet north of the deep depression already 

 referred to and, of course, more recent. 



From the above facts it is probable that the preglacial Buffalo creek 

 entered the present lake depression between the present site of the Lehigh 

 docks and Stony Point, .cutting its way through soft Marcellus shales between 

 the edge of the Corniferous and Stafford limestones. 



The line where the rock suddenly drops off from thirty-seven feet to one 

 hundred and twenty and ninety feet, is approximately the southward con- 

 tinuation of the bluff seen at the Front and may have had a similar origin ; 

 or it may be the extension of the southern limit of the Corniferous lime- 

 stone into the lake. At present we have not sufficient data to determine 

 this point. 



There is no evidence to show that there ever was a great river here, or 

 that the drainage before or since the glacial epoch was essentially different 

 from that existing. 



When the continent attained its present elevation at the close of the 

 Champlain period, Buffalo creek probably made for itself a channel not very 

 far from the old one, emptying into the lake near the present site of the Lehigh 

 docks. The sheet of glacial clays and sand, covering the valley east of the 

 lake to the depth of thirty to fifty feet, extended out into the lake depression, 

 filling the ancient channel near Stony Point to about the same depth. Across 

 this detritus the submerged current of the creek flowed, cutting a shallow 

 channel and finally losing itself in the lake beyond. Winds drifted sand 

 upon the beach along the lake front, forming a sand ridge higher than the 

 land to the eastward, like that now forming. The combined action of wind 

 and waves formed a bar at the mouth of the sluggish Buffalo creek, damming 

 it and causing it to flow northward, the sand ridge separating it from the lake 

 and determining its present course. 



