The Slopes Of Tonawanda And Buffalo

On my Niagara natural history blog, http://www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com/ there is a posting "Tonawanda And The Niagara River". That posting is mainly about the City of Tonawanda north of the Interstate 290 highway. This posting focuses on the Town of Tonawanda south of that highway. The two postings are not connected and readers can read one without the other.

Every area has something about the way things are done there that is confusing to outsiders. The world would not be as interesting if that were not the case. In the Niagara area on the U.S. side, it is this "town" system. A "town" is not only a mid-sized settlement, larger than a village but smaller than a city, it also refers to a newer urban area just outside of the original older city or village.

That is why there may be both a city and a town, or a village and a town, with the same name. In this case, it is Tonawanda.

Come to think of it, my native Britain plays games with towns too. In Gloucestershire, it may be confusing as to why Gloucester is a city while nearby Cheltenham, which is about the same size, is only a town. There, the definition involves cathedrals. Gloucester has a cathedral while Cheltenham doesn't.

Anyway, Tonawanda, NY is generally considered as a northern outer suburb of Buffalo. But it is large enough so that if Buffalo were not nearby, it would be a significant city in it's own right.

The landscape of the Town of Tonawanda is mainly flat. But a closer look reveals several very significant glacial features that were formed at the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago.

Here is a map link if you would like http://www.maps.google.com/ or http://www.multimap.com/

These glacial features are the result of two different slopes in Tonawanda. There is an overall southward slope to the underlying rock strata here. But there is also a somewhat more limited westward slope to the strata, that has produced results of it's own.

SOUTHWARD SLOPE

Let's first look at the major southward slope. At the intersection of Military Road and Sheridan Drive, is is easy to see this slope if we look southward, in the direction of Buffalo. On Kenmore Avenue, looking along the side streets in either direction, this gradual southward slope is also apparent. Notice how Delaware Avenue rises going northward from Kenmore Avenue.

Niagara Falls Boulevard also gradually gets lower in elevation as we proceed southward. This can be seen from the intersection of Sheridan Drive and the Boulevard and also further north at the intersection of Robinson Road and Niagara Falls Boulevard.

This southward slope can be observed all over the area. Even near Tonawanda Creek, if we look south from East Niagara Street along Carney and Douglas Streets. This can also be seen if we look southward along East Longs and Fillmore Avenue. Looking across Tonawanda Creek to the North Tonawanda side, it is clear that there also, the streets slope southward toward the creek.

At the intersection of Colvin Boulevard and Brighton Road in Tonawanda, we can see that we are in a broad and shallow bowl if we look in any direction. Now notice on a map that this intersection is directly south of the southernmost extents of both Tonawanda and Ellicott Creeks.

This is due to a glacial thrust southward along the underlying rock strata at the end of the last ice age. The thrust plowed up the ground, making an interruption in the general southward slope and the creek naturally used that as it's bank. The same thrust continued and produced the broad shallow valley in the ground.

Just west of Niagara Falls Boulevard on Brighton Road, notice that the road is actually atop a broad, low ridge that extends for some distance in either direction if we look to the north and south along the side streets. Now, if we look at the so-called Green Acres North area east of Niagara Falls Boulevard and north of the Interstate 290, we see that the area actually occupies a broad valley.

A glacial thrust that was parallel to the one at Colvin and Brighton pushed up the dirt to form the valley at Green Acres North and deposited it to form the ridge that can be seen along Brighton.

Notice that Niagara Falls Boulevard is actually in a shallow valley around the intersection with Brighton Road. This was formed by another glacial thrust, a massive berg of ice which broke free from the main glacial sheet as the last ice age ended and slid along the slope of the underlying rock strata.

This vast iceberg continued southward, plowing up the ground in front of it as it went along. It finally came to a halt around where the intersection of Niagara Falls Boulevard and Kenmore Avenue is now located. The halt to it's slide was most likely the result of both the melting of the ice berg and the growing pile of soil and debris which it plowed up in front of it.

At the intersection of Niagara Falls Boulevard and Kenmore Avenue, we are at the deepest point of what was once a fairly deep lake for it's size. The eastern side of the former lake is much steeper than it's gradual western side. Tops parking lot occupies part of the former lake bed. To the west, we can see that the former lake began at Fairfield Avenue.

The University of Buffalo, just to the south on Main Street, is built atop the vast amount of debris which the iceberg plowed up in front of it as it slid southward. The reason that there is a terrace between the former lake and this pile of glacial debris must be because there is a glacial impact crater involved.

After the melting berg had come to a halt. It fractured laterally in the manner of the other glacial impact craters I have described in my Niagara blog and pushed the debris pile backward to the south. This is where the university is now located and Main Street is built upon the resulting terrace between the two.

If we go north along Capen Boulevard from Kenmore Avenue, we can see a cross section of this former lake. The lake gets more shallow as we proceed north. It appears probable that the former shore of this lake, let's call it Lake Kenmore since there already is a former Lake Tonawanda, is where Sheridan Drive is now located.

Lake Kenmore is the prominent feature in the Tonawanda-Kenmore area produced by icebergs at the end of the last ice age sliding across the slope in the underlying rock strata. But the southward slope continues as we go southward into Buffalo.

On Main Street in downtown Buffalo, it can be readily seen that the elevation of the land to the west of Main Street is considerably higher than the land to the east of Main Street. The East Side of Buffalo was once a wide raceway of glacial fragments sliding southward at the end of the last ice age. This difference in land elevation is because these ice bergs plowed away the ground as they went.

One result of this raceway and the plowing up of the ground is the ridge along High Street in downtown Buffalo. It is the ridge atop which Buffalo General Hospital is built. Ridges like this result when the sliding icebergs melt so much and have plowed up so much ground in front of them that they cannot move any further. The ground in front of them remains where it is.

The High Street Ridge only extends eastward for a certain way. Further east, the sliding icebergs pushed much further south. In fact, all the way to what is now Ridge Road in Lackawanna, to the south of Buffalo. This road is built atop a ridge that was formed in the same way as the High Street Ridge.

The ridge extends eastward toward South Park Avenue. We can see on a map that there must have been some westward momentum to the glacial fragments that produced the ridge upon which Ridge Road is built.

(Note- While you are in Lackawanna, you can have a look in Father Baker's Basilica at the intersection of Ridge Road and South Park Avenue. It is really awesome).

WESTWARD SLOPE

The westward slope to the land, in Tonawanda and elsewhere, is not quite as prominent as the southward slope. But it has produced some signifigant landscape features nevertheless.

I pointed out how the ridge upon which Ridge Road in Lackawanna is built is seen to have a westward as well as a southward momentum in the glacier that produced it. We can see this reflected in Main Street in downtown Buffalo. Main Street here is built roughly along the edge of where the East Side Raceway operated.

Notice that Main Street does not run exactly north-south, but is tilted slightly southwest to northeast. This makes it virtually perpendicular to Ridge Road, which shows that Ridge Road was produced by ice sliding southward through this raceway.

We can see the western slope to the underlying rock strata in a number of places, just as we could the southward slope. In the far northern extent of Tonawanda, Creekside Drive can be seen to get progressively lower in elevation as we go westward from Niagara Falls Boulevard. Looking east along the side streets from Parker Boulevard, we can also see how the ground gets higher going east.

Brighton Road gets lower in elevation west of Eggert Road. Sheridan Drive has a long and gradual drop in elevation going west from Delaware Road, which continues west of Military Road. The same westward slope can be seen on Ensminger Road, parallel to the north of Sheridan Drive.

There is a peak in the land elevation at the intersection of Sheridan Drive and Delaware Road. This was created in the same way as was Lake Kenmore, described above. A massive berg of ice slid westward along this slope in the underlying rock strata, plowing up the ground as it went, until it could not go any further.

This peak in the elevation of the land is actually part of a ridge. North of Sheridan Drive, we can see that there is a ridge which runs northwest to southeast and crosses both Delaware Road and Delaware Avenue.

South of Sheridan Drive, we can see that there is a drop in elevation to both the east and west of Delaware Road, but the drop is less to the west than to the east. This is because the road occupies a ridge that was formed by a massive iceberg sliding from the east along the westward slope of the ground.

There is another glacial ridge nearby. On Ensminger Road, just west of Military Road, we go over a ridge. On Military Road, we can see that there is a wide, shallow dip in the level of the road from the Interstate 290 highway to Oakridge Avenue.

This is the result of another iceberg plowing westward and creating a glacial ridge.

Now, let's proceed further west along Sheridan Drive. If we look south along Riverview Boulevard, we again see the drop in land elevation going southward.

But if we proceed down this street, it becomes apparent that this was once a lake. Looking further west along Riverview and we see that the elevation increases. The bottom of the lake was clearly at what is now the intersection of Riverview Boulevard and Woodward Avenue.

Notice that the deepest point of this former lake was toward it's southwest. This is because the lake, like Lake Kenmore, was formed by a massive iceberg sliding across the ground with both southward and westward slopes until it came to a halt.

We can also see that the same combination of the westward and the southward slopes led the sliding icebergs to form the Delaware Ridge, because it is aligned from northwest to southeast.

I find it interesting that if we draw a line approximately bisecting this former lake, let's call it Lake Sheridan, and passing through it's deepest point.

The line turns out to be perpendicular to the Delaware Ridge. This means that there could be a connection between the two, aside from the fact that they were both formed by the same south and west slopes to the ground.

This seems to indicate that another glacial impact crater could have occurred. When the massive berg of ice that formed the Delaware Ridge came to a halt, it could have fractured laterally like so many bergs that formed other glacial impact craters. But the underlying rock strata was sloped enough that instead of forming a glacial impact crater, the berg of ice slid along the slope until it came to a halt itself. Then it melted and the result was this lake.

The lake, Lake Sheridan, would have continued as a lake for quite some time, as would Lake Kenmore, because the slope of the land would have channelled water to it.

The reason that I even noticed this former Lake Sheridan is that I could see the present Two Mile Creek that crosses Sheridan Park, parallel to East Park Drive, once must have been much larger than it is today. The valley around the creek obviously was not carved by the little bit of water that flows through it at present. I looked southward along Riverview Boulevard to see if I could find out where all of this water once came from and, I noticed the former lake.

This can be easily seen in the satellite imagery.

Furthermore, I notice that the considerable valley around Two Mile Creek is itself parallel to the ridge that cross Ensminger Road just west of Military Road, let's call it the Ensminger Ridge. Could the same thing have happened here, the glacier that formed the ridge fracturing laterally and sliding? I consider it a good possibility. Then, the lake drained northward through the valley that was produced.

There is another former drainage channel that crosses Sheridan Park, it is west of Two Mile Creek and eventually merges with it. There is also a large former drainage channel which crosses the main roads just to the south and parallel to the 290 Interstate highway and this appears to have joined two mile creek also.

Of course if we go further into Tonawanda, north of the Interstate 290, the ground elevation begins to get lower going north. But this is the former shore of the vast Lake Tonawanda, which I described in the posting "Tonawanda And The Niagara River" and even this was the result of the glacial slide southward plowing the ground along in front of it.