Waterfall in Connecticut

The earth has been pretty well explored --superficially; but there are plenty of secrets still to be found under the earth's skin. Professor Richard J. Lougee of Clark University has reported finding a fossil waterfall, almost as high as Niagara, that roared 20,000 years ago in geographically modest Connecticut.

In those days New England was still having glacier trouble, but the icecap was shrinking. As the glacier in the Connecticut Valley retreated northward, something dammed its overflow, forming a deep, cold lake that reached almost from Long Island Sound to the shrinking glacier--about 156 miles long and up to 14 miles wide. Paleo-geographer Lougee adopted the lake and named it Lake Hitchcock. He studied it as closely as if it were still wet. By counting banded sediments (varves) in its ancient bottom, he found that the lake lasted for 4,000 years. Then it vanished suddenly, perhaps in a few days.

Wondering why, Dr. Lougee explored the valley. In a gorge near Middletown, Conn., he found the remains of the ancient dam: a delta made of sediment dropped by the outflow.

As the glacier shrank, the Connecticut coast, relieved of the ice burden, began to rise. The delta rose too, diverting the water through a gap in the side of the gorge. The new channel, floored with solid rock, held fast while the land rose higher & higher. Lake Hitchcock backed into New Hampshire. Near East Haddam, Conn, (whose placid main street now occupies the channel) the diverted river plunged over a 150 ft. cliff.

For 4,000 years the waterfall tossed its spray, but probably no human being ever saw it. Little by little the dam eroded; a finger of water trickled across it. The trickle grew to a swift torrent that cut down through the sediment dam like a fire hose washing mud pies. With a horrible Pleistocene roar, Lake Hitchcock's water swept down to the Sound. The East Haddam falls were silent. The lake bottom lay bare and fertile for Springfield and Hartford to grow on.

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