May, 1912.] A Study of Buckeye Lake and Vicinity. 
5 J 9 
till devoid of boulders and composed largely of clay is easily 
transported by streams and readily lends itself to delta formation. 
This is well shown by the relatively extensive deltas built by several 
small streams flowing into Buckeye Lake. One of these called the 
Southwest Feeder, a distributary from the Licking River, 
near Kirkersville, flows across the plain in a southerly direction and 
enters Buckeye Lake just north of Millersport. The Feeder dates 
from the completion of the Reservoir in 1832 and is therefore 80 
years old. In this time it built a delta approximately 200 feet 
long. A dense mat of pond plants has so blocked the outlet that 
but little water is received by the lake from this source during 
periods of ordinarily dry weather. 
The mouth of Buckeye creek, one of the largest tributaries to 
Buckeye Lake from the south, is so shallow and so choked with 
aquatic and marsh plants that it is obliterated during the summer 
months. The same condition would prevail at Honey creek, 
another tributary from the south, if the channel were not dredged 
and thus kept open. 
Streams dating from the recession of the Wisconsin ice must 
have built deltas so extensive, that they would be readily recog- 
nizable. Moreover, there cannot have been an extensive post 
Wisconsin lake of long duration if we accept Mr. Mather’s 6 con- 
clusion as to the age of the gorge of the Licking River at the 
Licking Narrows. From his study of this gorge Mr. Mather 
concludes that it antedates the Wicsonsin ice age. If this can be 
accepted, a post Wisconsin lake would have been drained by the 
eastward flowing Licking River, for this outlet is broad and 
deep enough to have prevented the retention of a large body of 
water to the west at the fort of the glacier. 
It seems to me that all the positive and negative evidence 
which the region affords precludes the possibility of the existence 
of a large post Wisconsin lake or anything more than a temporary 
and shallow body of water which would naturally result from the 
melting of an extensive ice sheet. 
What is the evidence for or against the existence of a large 
interglacial lake in the region under discussion? Such a lake if 
formed by the recession of the Illinoian ice sheet, must have extended 
20 miles from north to south and 20 or more miles from east to 
west and with its bed at least as deeply excavated as the streams 
which entered it. The record of a gas well in the Raccoon creek 
valley, just before it suddenly widens to join the broad plain west 
of Newark and f of a mile north of the crossing of the creek by 
the Ohio Electric railway, shows that the rock has been excavated 
to a depth of 453 feet below the present surface. This well marks 
the greatest depth in an old valley whose stream would have been 
6. Mather. K. F. Age of Licking Narrows. Bull. Den. Univ. 14: 174-187. 1908, ’09. 
