Lake Whittlesey

The hinge line is where the horizontal beaches of the lake have been warped upwards towards the north by the isostatic rebound as the weight of the ice sheet was removed from the land.

Where the outlet entered the Second Lake Saginaw at Cass City the elevation is 740 feet (230 m) above sea level.

One reason for this is the fact that the rise of water caused estuarine conditions for some distance up the valleys beyond the Whittlesey beach, and it was necessary to fill these estuaries from their heads down-stream past the beach before the lake-bed proper would receive a coating of delta material.

When the ice sheet advanced and the water levels rose, the lower courses of the streams became drowned and were turned into dead-water estuaries.

Recent erosion during the modern Lake Erie period has deepened these stream beds, removing most of the estuarine deltas.

It buries the eastward ends of the Arkona beach ridges a mile or two east of Alden.

Another smaller delta, formed, by a river flowing along the ice border, occurs near Guelph, Junction, Ontario.

A river of some size entered Lake Whittlesey northeast of Alden, New York, and built a delta which buried the Arkona beaches.

But this relation was transitory and endured for so short a time that no evidence of renewed wave work has been found.