Still later, the melt-water from retreating glaciers during the last Ice Age once again filled New York’s upper basin with large lakes. It was responsible for converting the Adirondack Mountains from a land of rivers into a land of lakes, and filled various other rivers to overflowing—creating lakes all along their routes. Before highways were built, water travel across these various waterways was by far the best means of transportation. Thus, the history of New York is unavoidably linked to the Ice Age.

    Pertinent to Book of Mormon Geography is a body of water created during the glacial period which matches in every way the sea that divides the lands mentioned in Ether 10:20. This inland sea was created when the glacier, which pressed over much of upper New York, retreated northward opening up an outlet to the Hudson River which caused the rapid drainage of a great body of water known as Lake Lundy. As its waters drained away, three lesser lakes were left behind, Lake Erie, Lake Iroquois (the enlarged ancestor of Lake Ontario), and lake Tonawanda—an inland sea left ponded in the plains between the two greater lakes. Lake Tonawanda stretched across western New York from the Niagara River almost to Rochester in its early stages, with its waters spreading northward almost to the escarpment. But, in time, it diminished in length to somewhere around 58 miles. This important sea will prove to be one of the most important landmarks in the Book of Mormon, and the key to understanding Book of Mormon geography. 

    About 12,000 years ago, as the "Wisconsin" ice age drew to a close, the melt water along the front of the retreating glacier pooled into the depressions that had been formed by the weight of the ice. Enormous bodies of water - much larger than the present Great Lakes - began to form. Wherever it was freed from the weight of the glacier, the land began to rise or rebound, causing dramatic changes in the size, distribution and drainage patterns of the glacial lakes. With each new shift, or uplift, the lakes spilled out in new directions, to the southwest, to the south, and to the east. Thus, the Great Lakes experienced a number of changes during their long history, with Lake Tonawanda, being just one of the small lakes formed during the period of receding ice.

    John Peter D’Agostino, the foremost authority on Lake Tonawanda, traced her long history through five of the stages which brought the Great Lakes to their current size and water-levels.

   1-Pre-Algonquin stage- Lake Tonawanda’s earliest history can be traced back to the Pre-Algonquin stage of Great Lakes’ history which many say began around 10,000 - 12,000 years ago.

   2-The Algonquin stage. By the time the Pre-Algonquin passed into the Algonquin stage, D’Agostino claims Lake Tonawanda was well established in an early middle stage of development, and beginning to form a continuous shoreline. The Lower Rapids Gorge in the Niagara Gorge was being formed during this phase.

   3-The Post-Algonquin stage. This stage saw a rise the volume of water in Lake Erie due to the first of two major glacial rebounds, with Lake Tonawanda’s water level increasing accordingly. The discharge from Lake Erie followed two courses now, with its greatest flow over the Niagara Escarpment beginning to carve out Niagara’s great Lower Gorge. Although diminished by the uplifted lands further eastward, a portion of Lake Erie’s discharge continued to flow into Lake Tonawanda and then eastward along the Niagara Escarpment to the Hudson River for a considerable length of time. In fact, so much water poured eastward along the scarp, and for such a long period of time, that a deep channel was cut which was deep enough to be used as a means of transporting—today being part of the New York Barge Canal, or the old Erie Canal.

   4-The Nipissing stage. Lake Tonawanda was still in her middle stage during the Nipissing stage, although her waters were beginning to thin a little due to the deposition of sedimentation from Lake Erie, and the Niagara River was beginning to form the Upper Rapids Gorge. D’Agostino claims that Lake Iroquois was altered from a fresh water lake to a marine sea during this stage, an occurrence explained below.

   5- The Post-Nipissing stage. Not only is this the last of the Great Lakes stages, but the current stage of Great Lakes’ history. During this stage a second glacial rebound occurred. Ice first retreated from the western end of the Lake Iroquois basin, sending its outlet flow south toward New York's Hudson River Valley. But when a massive plug of ice finally pulled away from the Thousand Islands, where it had been blocking the flow in the basin's eastern end, the waters of Lake Iroquois surged through the newly-opened channel of the St. Lawrence River. As the Lake began to drain east toward the Atlantic, the eastern end of the Iroquois basin sprang back from the weight of the glacier, causing the water levels in Lake Iroquois to drop and the lake's shoreline recede, which began the long, slow birth of present-day Lake Ontario, which some say took centuries. In time, the lands in Canada rose high enough to close the portal between Lake Iroquois and the Atlantic, which reduced the St. Lawrence sea to just a river and changed Lake Iroquois back from a marine sea to a fresh water lake which has subsequently been called Lake Ontario. The History of Lake Erie, maintains that all the lakes assumed their present shapes about 1000 B.C. Lake Ontario as we know it today is thought to have been born around 600 B.C. when the upper Great Lakes began to drain through the Erie basin into Lake Ontario and from there through the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic. The editors of The Colossal Cataract, which documents the history of the Niagara River, place the emergence of Lake Ontario sometime between 200 B.C. and the time of Christ. Who knows but what the destruction which took place at the time of the Savior’s death had something to do with these major changes. The Niagara River was still forming the Upper Rapids Gorge during this period, which continues today.

    D’Agostino thinks Lake Tonawanda may have been in her late stage during the Post Nipissing Stage, or the current lake stage, yet found no evidence to suggest when her greater waters actually went dry. He speculates that the last land uplift may have been a determining factor in draining the lake. However, since the uplift was slow and spanned centuries, just recently considered completed, the life-span of Lake Tonawanda must have extended right through both the Jaredite and Nephite eras, for as D’Agostino explains, "Lake Tonawanda is not actually an extinct lake, even today, and only when the present swamps become totally filled or drained will Lake Tonawanda’s existence be ended."

Lake Tonawanda’s Discharge

The Narrow Neck

    An inland sea like Lake Tonawanda is first mentioned in the Jaredite account where we learn that the Jaredites built a great city by a sea that divided the lands, and that a narrow neck of some kind existed near the sea. "And they built a great city by the narrow neck of land, by the place where the sea divides the land." (Ether 10:20.)

    As far as what constitutes the narrow neck described in Ether 10:20, continuing research of the old lake bed brings to light the existence of a moraine of glacial till which runs directly through the seabed near Albany, New York, which would have essentially separated the lake’s eastern waters from its western. (A moraine is generally 10 to 30 meters in thickness, or 30-90 ft.) Frank Leverett tells us the Batavia Moraine, which makes up a big portion of the lower and middle neck, with the Barre Moraine making up its more northern extension, "rises into a stout till ridge 30 to 50 feet in height, which has a well-defined crest and gently undulating surface..."

   This natural barrier correlates remarkably well with the narrow neck of land described in Alma 63:5; a neck of land high enough to rise above the lake’s waters, which D’Agostino informs us was 35 ft. deep in its western basin, and 20 ft. deep in its eastern, and of ample thickness to provide dry passage for those who wished to cross from one side of the sea to the other.

   E.G. Squire informs us that an unbroken chain of no fewer than twenty ancient fortifications was found stretching from the narrow neck around Alabama, New York, southward to Buffalo Creek (the proposed Sidon), a distance of 50 miles, the reason undoubtedly being the need to protect and facilitate those crossing the narrow neck into the land northward, and the reverse.

. . . And in the days of Lib the poisonous serpents were destroyed. Wherefore they did go into the land southward, to hunt food for the people of the land, for the land was covered with animals of the forest. And Lib also himself became a great hunter. (Ether 10:19-21.)

 

Copyright © 1998 by Phyllis Carol Olive