History of Chautauqua County, New York, Part 3

Author: Edson, Obed, 1832-; Merrill, Georgia Drew, editor
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : W.A. Fergusson
Number of Pages: 1068

USA > New York > Chautauqua County > History of Chautauqua County, New York > Part 3

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Above the Portage formation lie the rocks of the Chemung epoch, which extend from the northern face of the ridge south through the county, with generally nothing but drift covering them. They are exposed to view along the streams and in the ravines of the south part of the county, and are best seen along the upper-waters of Chautauqua and Little Chautauqua creeks, the outlet of Chautauqua lake at Dexterville, a part of Twenty-mile creek, and at points along Cassadaga and Conewango creeks, and along the banks of their tributaries. They are less than 1,500 feet in thickness, and are com- posed of sandstones aud coarse shales with ripple marks, oblique lamination and shrinkage cracks, denoting the deposits to have been made in shallow

HISTORY OF CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, N. Y.

water. There are many fossils in the rocks of the Chemung epoch : aviculæe, brachiopods in great numbers, including the broad-winged spirifers, and some producti ; a huge gonitate, four or five inches in diameter, and sometimes a trilobite, and, rarely, a tooth of a fish. Of the multitude of species peopling the waters in the Portage and Chemung periods none have survived in the form in which they then existed.

The Panama and Salamanca conglomerates and underlying sandstones here compose the upper strata of the Chemung group, and are the last formed of our stratified rocks. They were a shore formation, and are composed of masses of pebbles, fine gravel and sand, accumulated in the Devonian Age in great beds and irregular heaps on the northern shore of the vast Paleozoic ocean that extended indefinitely southward, and for time inconceivable heaved its billows there. The gravel and pebbles were brought to this ocean by rivers and streams, washed shoreward by the surf and tide, and then sea- ward by the refluent waves, producing the collection and arrangement that make up the Panama conglomerate. It here probably constituted the last contribution made by the sea to the continent of North America before it became dry land. Time cemented the pebbles, gravel and sand into a hard and solid mass. The great openings that now appear in these rocks, divid- . ing them into blocks as at Panama and Rock City, are not the result of upheavals, but are solely the quiet work of frost and ice, aided by the weight of the rocks ; a silent process, still imperceptibly going on, during that almost immeasurable period that has elapsed since the Devonian Age, slowly opening and widening these fissures into passages that have come to resemble the streets and avenues of a city.

During the great stretch of time that followed the Chemung period the continent continued to rise and gradually extend its limits west and south, until its boundaries became as at present. The Catskill period came after the Chemung, and closed the Devonian Age and Paleozoic Time. Then fol- lowed amazing sweeps of time, known as the Carboniferous or Coal-producing Age, the Age of Reptiles, and the Age of Mammals, called also Mesozoic and Cenozoic Time, during which Chautauqua county remained substantially above the sea, although perhaps at times submerged. What vegetable growths and living creatures existed upon its surface during the millions of years included in these vast eras of time down to the Quaternary or Age of Man, we have no evidence. They have been swept away by water and ice. Yet there existed upon this continent succeeding species of animal and vege- table existence, forming a regular system of progress from the lower to the higher, commencing with the simplest sea-plant and coral to end with man. However few if any forms of life existed that are represented by living species.

During the ages in which the Portage and Chemung rocks were formed, and prior to the Quarternary Age, Lake Erie was excavated by ice during

GEOLOGY .- THE GLACIAL PERIOD.

recurring periods of intense cold. There is little doubt that this region then underwent important and extensive changes. Owing to the constant oscilla- tions of this continent, more restless and inconstant than the sea, the drain- age of the basin of the great lakes (always an extensive region of waters) has been transferred in regular process from the west to the east-from the Mississippi gradually to the Hudson, and then to the St. Lawrence. All the northern states, by reason of this rising and sinking of the land, have been scored and furrowed with new and extensive lines of drainage. Facts brought to light by the coast survey and the recent investigations of geologists prove (it is believed) that a preglacial river extended from the south end of Lake Huron, before Lake Erie was formed, occupying a channel now buried, extending through Ontario to Lake Erie, curving around Long Point, and following the valley of Grand river in a buried channel northerly to the west endl of Lake Ontario. The evidences left by the Quaternary Age are con- .spicuous and abundant. This period is divided into three epochs : the Glacial or Drift, the Champlain epoch, and the recent and last epoch which brings us down to historical time.

The extensive area (comprising 4,000 square miles) including most of Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, and a part of Allegany counties in New York, and the greater portions of Warren, Mckean, and a part of Potter counties in Pennsylvania, is called by Prof. Carrl and other geologists, the Chautauqua Basin. It is composed of long, irregular valleys, having crooked and often ragged branches, separated by irregular ranges of hills. This basin lies south of the summit of the before mentioned ridge, at an average altitude above Lake Erie of seven or eight hundred feet, the hills that bound it often rising from five hundred to one thousand feet higher. The Chautauqua Basin, since the first of the Quaternary Age has been covered with great beds of northern drift, which is deep even on the hills, but lies deepest in the valleys. Before the glaciers came to widen and partially fill the valleys, to carve the hills into their present graceful forms, the landscape had bolder outlines, the hills were higher and more rugged, the valleys were deep chasis walled by steep and rocky sides. The region is now drained by the upper Allegany, and the Conewango, and their tributaries, and the outer edge of the basin is identical with the highest line of the highlands where these streams have their sources. The waters flow southward and converge into one outlet -- the Allegany. That river at Thompson's Gap, six miles below Irvinton, passes through a narrow chasm or notch cut deeply through the southwestern rim of the basin. According to Prof. Carrl, an able geologist of Pennsylvania, if a dam two hundred feet high should be built across the Allegany river at this narrow defile, it would cause the waters of these streams to flow back and flood all this valley region. The waters would rise thirty-one feet above the surface of Chautauqua, twenty-five feet higher than Cassadaga lake, and would be

HISTORY OF CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, N. Y.

forced to flow north through a notch in the northern rim of the Chautauqua basin at Cassadaga lake into the channel of the Canadaway and Lake Erie. Measurements made in railroad surveys, borings for oil, careful comparison of altitudes of the hills and the depth of the northern drift, afford satisfactory evidence that before the glaciers invaded this basiu its waters were for ages discharged northward. As we follow up the Conewango from Warren, and the Cassadaga to the headwaters of the Canadaway, and then go down the latter stream, the rocky floor beneath the drift and alluvium of the valley will be found lying deeper and deeper as we proceed northward. The coast survey of Lake Erie reveals the fact that soundings extending across the lake in a direction corresponding with the course of the Canadaway stream are deeper than the adjacent parts of the lake, indicating that the Canadaway formerly continued its course northward to the before mentioned ancient river bed. These facts indicate that if the debris of this valley should be removed, and the hard rock that forms its floor be exposed, we should dis- cover a deep canon extending from Warren northward in almost a direct line to Lake Erie at Dunkirk ; thence northerly to the buried channel of the ancient river of Lake Erie. Its rocky bottom would be seen to have a very regular slope or descent to the north, as if it were worn by water running in that direction into Lake Erie with walls of precipitous rocky sides forming a chasm in some places nearly one thousand feet deep. The deep gorge of the Canadaway, which seems to have its upper or south termination at Laona and Shumla, actually extends far beneath and south of the waters of the Cassadaga lake, and the lake lies in a little cavity sunk in the surface of an immense deposit of northern drift now filling this ancient gorge. It further appears from like data (the depth of oil wells sunk along the Allegany in Cat- taraugus and MeKean counties, the form of the hills, and the direction of the valleys) that the waters of the upper Allegany and its tributaries, instead of flowing as they now do by way of Kinzua and Warren southward, were formerly deflected westward at Steamburg, and discharged into this ancient river of the Cassadaga at or near Falconer. Frank Leverett, assistant United States geologist, who has carefully examined the drift regions of Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania, and in 1893 surveyed the territory included in Chautauqua county, regards the evidence as decisive that the Upper Allegany, Conewango, Broken-Straw and much of the Oil creek and French creek ter- ritories discharged their waters in pre-glacial times into Lake Erie. His observations throw some doubt, however, upon the conclusion that the princi- pal drainage of the Chautauqua Basin was through the pre-glacial river of the Cassadaga, and suggests that it may have occurred through a buried chan- nel in the wider valley of the Conewango, and beneath the bed of the Cat- taraugus, where there are signs of a lower rocky floor and of a deeper chan- nel extending into the area now occupied by Lake Erie than by the way of

GEOLOGY .- THE GLACIAL PERIOD.

the Canadaway. In that case the ancient Cassadaga and Upper Allegany may have been tributaries of this Conewango and Cattaraugus flowing river.

Like other waters of the Chautauqua basin the waters of Chautauqua lake it is believed went once in a channel which extends under the drift from the foot of the lake north of Jamestown to Falconer where they were discharged into this northward flowing river. These old water-channels we find now choked throughout their entire length, and in most places deeply buried beneath vast masses of gravel stones and sand, and the waters which would have flowed through them into northern oceans now flow into the Mississippi. What brought this loose material here to fill the valleys and dam these ancient channels and turn their waters southward and spread it over the hills in such vast quantities has been a curious and interesting subject of specu- lation. The explanation now accepted by geologists is that it is the oper- ations of glaciers through vast eras of time, aided to a limited extent by icebergs.

The point from whence started the great glacier that spread over the east- ern part of North America, including the Chautauqua basin is the highest point in the rocky highlands between St. Lawrence river and Hudson's bay. Early in the cold period the snow and ice accumulated in this elevated region put forth immense tongues, which followed the Canadian valleys, filling them with ice, carving them wider and deeper, advancing southward during the cold of winter, and receding slightly before the heat of summer. . Is the cold increased in intensity the glaciers increased in magnitude. Having filled the valleys they ascended the lower hills, still moving southward in the winter, and lingering longer in the summer. At length a field of ice moved across the St. Lawrence valley into New York and New England, and in a broad mass up the basin of Lake Ontario. The direction of its motion is marked by scratches upon the rocks, the arrangement of the boulders along its course, and its terminal moraines. During long eras of time the cold grew more and more intense until its maximum was reached. The glacier invaded regions further and still further south, and, no longer confined to river channels and mountain gorges, it scaled hills and ridges. A grand mer de glace covered the valley of the Genesee, filled Lake Erie and pushed against the base of the ridge bounding the basin of Lake Erie on the south. It forced its way into the gorges at the months of the streams of western Pennsylvania and northern Ohio which discharged their waters northward into Lake Erie. As it ascended the chasms of the Cattaraugus and the Cas- sadaga, it carried away their rough sides, deeply filling the channels with an earthy mass. It scaled the dividing ridge, and climbed to the summits of the highest hills of the county, spreading deeply over highland and lowland an unbroken sheet of the loose material called drift. As this glacier forced its way up the channel of the Cassadaga and Cattaraugus, it seems to have

HISTORY OF CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, N. Y.

met a great glacier that had ascended the Genesee river and crossed into the chasm formed by the Upper Allegany. These two streams of ice, controlled by the same laws that govern running water but moving with far less velocity, formed a great eddy among the hills of Cattaraugus. There we may now see to great advantage, in the wonderful sculpturing of the hills and the carving out of the valleys, the effects of the enormous power of these mighty glaciers as they whirled against each other like currents of water.

The old gorge in the rocks underneath Chautauqua lake, which may once have been the channel of an important tributary of the ancient northward flowing river, was also during the ice period buried beneath immense masses of drift. Along the shores of the lake we now see displayed to great advant- age the work that closed its channel. Chautauqua, Long and Bemus points are all moraines left by the retiring glaciers. Extending from the foot of the lake as far as Falconer are ranges of drift hills and immense isolated heaps of gravel and stones piled by the glaciers as at Tiffanyville. Seldom do we find such masses of drift as the hills upon which Jamestown is built. The glacier moved southerly, probably obliquely, along the eastern shore of the lake, shoving along beneath it masses of debris which it had loosened from the firm, stratified rocks in regions northward-gathered mainly from the hills of Ellery. It filled the old channel, which extended easterly north of the cemetery near Jamestown, and nearly along the course of Moon's creek towards Falconer. It then moved slowly sonthward at right angles with the longest axis of the lake, bearing with it that huge mass of debris forming the hills of Jamestown. It so dammed the waters of the channel as to form the Chautanqua lake, and gradually crowded the outlet southward, until, at the close of the ice period, its course extended to where we find it now, bending around the main part of Jamestown. The duration of the ice period was so great, and the process of accumulating these deposits of drift so slow, that had man then existed the movement of the glacier would have been unobserved by him. No better opportunity is offered the geological investigator to observe the curious effect of melting ice from a receding glacier than within the limits of Jamestown. The curved stratification and irregular deposition of earthy matter are conspicuously displayed along the streets and railroad lines and near the Swedish orphan asylum.

The same causes and the same movement of the glaciers that made the drift-hills at Jamestown, produced Chautauqua, Bemus and Long points. These capes extend across the old channel in the same direction, and now, when the waters of the lake are lowered, crowd its course southward in the same manner. They divide the lake into separate compartments or smaller , lakes connected by channels or straits, and the deepest part of each lake is usually just above or just below these divisions. Above Chautauqua and Chautauqua Point, according to accurate soundings taken through the ice,

GEOLOGY .- THE GLACIAL PERIOD.

the lake is thirty-five feet deep, and the depth gradually decreases toward its head. Soundings show a depth of fifty feet a short distance below these points, which increase to ninety feet above Long Point, where are the deep- est parts of the lake. Between Long and Bemus Points the depth is sixty feet in places. Below Bemus Point the lake is twenty-five feet deep, and in the whole length of the lower lake it grows shallower to its outlet where it is but six feet in depth. These imperfect moraines now divide Chantauqua into four imperfect lakes, connected by straits or channels. A fifth lake existed during the ice period, filling the cavity between the drift-hills now occupied by that part of Jamestown known as Brooklyn, and the eastern part of the city. This lake was dammed, not only by drift and rocks but by ice also at Dexterville one mile below Jamestown, and was connected with the other lakes by a narrow strait.

The topography of the surface at this dam at Dexterville affords matter for curious inquiry. Where the outlet has cut its way through the rocks just above the railroad bridge, the tops of the rocks that wall the sides of the stream are very many feet higher than the surface of the ground a few rods to the west. Indeed a deep depression there connects this valley of Brooklyn with the wide valley below the Dexterville mills, which the railroad company has utilized by its cuttings. No one can fail to remark the regular and even descent that the surface maintains from the highest point of the hill beyond and east of the gorge through which the outlet flows until it reaches the rail- road cutting on the west side. Why should the waters seek a passage at this elevated point through so difficult and rock-breasted a route, when a few rods to the west a low depression invited an easy way for them, mobstructed except by loose earth and stones? The explanation may be that the ice so filled the depression at the railroad cutting as to compel the waters to seek a passage at the higher point now occupied by their present channel. Held for ages by this dam of ice, by slow, incessant work they may have lowered the channel to its present level. A study of the region of drift discloses many lik e instances. Even now permanent lakes exist in the frozen regions of the north that were made ages before the era of man, and have been held by shores formed exclusively of ice and snow precisely as they were formed at first. When Chautauqua lake was first formed it was more than fifty feet above its present level, as is evidenced by the materials that compose the plains and levels that border its shores. Old beaches extend around it high above its present waters. The lake was longer and wider than now. It extended far up the inlet and over the level plain at Hartfield. The beautiful bay at Dewittville was deeper and wider. The lake spread much beyond its present limits below Chautauqua. Bemus and Long points were submerged ; above and far below them the lake expanded wide over either shore, and a spacious bay extended far up the valley of Goose creek. The waters were broad and

HISTORY OF CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, N. Y.

deep over the swampy ground that borders both sides of the outlet. The lake's highest altitude is marked upon the hills of gravel and sand at James- town through which the outlet has worn its way. Its former elevation is plainly measured where its waters have slowly, very slowly, cut a passage at Dexterville. The process by which it has been drained was as slow as that by which it was formed. Indeed its drainage is still going on, but so sk wly that the change in its level that has occurred during the whole period of written human history scarce deserves a record. We may trace along the hillsides that surround it the marks of its subsiding waters as we read the passage of time in the slowly sinking sands of an hourglass. Indeed so slow has been the process of subsidence that the present level of its waters is apparently the same as when Cesar crossed the Rubicon.

The coming of the glaciers swept away the greater part of the Panama and Salamanca conglomerates that for an inconceivable period of time lay over the greater part of the county and at least as far north as the northern face of the ridge, and before the basin of Lake Erie was channelled out by ice per- haps over a much greater extent. Its thinnest edge has been worn away by the action of glaciers. Great fragments however still lie scattered over the hills of the southeastern towns.

The southern limits of this great glacier are well defined by a terminal moraine which consists of immense accumulation of boulders, gravel and loose material. North of this plainly marked line lie unbroken fields of drift, while south of it they disappear altogether. This terminal moraine has been traced from the Atlantic ocean to a long distance west of the Mississippi river. It forms the backbone of Long Island. It enters New Jersey south of New York city, thence extends westerly across that state and northwesterly through Pennsylvania and New York to a point near Salamanca where it changes its direction so abruptly as to make an acute angle. It then proceeds southwesterly into Pennsylvania, crossing the Conewango between Warren and the south bounds of Chautauqua. Chantauqua county during the glacial period lay close to the " line of battle between the frosts of the north and the tropical winds of the south.";

Glacial successions and eras of cold preceded and succeeded the important period marked by the deposition of this great terminal moraine, evidences of which exist in different parts of the county. The outer and southern limits of a great glacier that occupied the eastern portion of the valley of Lake Erie during a later period is marked by a terminal moraine that enters this county from the east at the northeast corner of Villenova and extends westerly along the northern borders of the town by East Mud lake. Curving to the south it passes out of Villenova at West Mud lake, extends west to, Arkwright Center, and southwest to the upper Cassadaga lake in Pomfret, westerly by

*The survey of this terminal moraine was made by Prof. G. Frederick Wright and others al out 1951.

THE CHAMPLAIN AND RECENT PERIODS.

Bear lake to Portland ; then curves south. About a mile north of Hartfield it turns northward, enters and crosses Westfield in an east and west direction, enters Ripley north of where the principal branch of Twenty-mile creek crosses the east line of that town. It then extends easterly and westerly along and north of that stream and crosses into Pennsylvania. This moraine was traced in 1893 by Frank Leverett, assistant United States geologist.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHAMPLAIN AND RECENT PERIODS.

"Since first the sunlight sprea I itself o'er earth : Since chaos gave a thousan I systems birth ;

Since first the morning stars together sung ; Since first this globe was on its axis hung, Untiring change, with ever moving hand,

Has waved ofer earth its more than magie wan !. "

T HE Champlain followed the Glacial epoch. During the Glacial epoch there had been a continous upward movement of the erest of this part of the earth until it had become more elevated than it is now. This contributed to produce the intense cold of the ice period. A period of depression now began the Champlain perio 1. This downward movement of the earth's ernst was accompanied by a raising of the temperature of this continent, and the melting ot the great glacier produced immense floods forming great lakes and rivers. The climate became far milder than now.

The physical features of the county were greatly changed by the glaciers. The landscape was also quite different at the close of the ice period from what it is now. There lay everywhere confused and unfertile heaps of loose earth, gravel and stones. Huge boulders were scattered at intervals entirely above the drift and over the whole surface. The; lay thickest along the northern face of the ridge and near its brow in Portland and the other ridge towns. They seem sometimes as if arranged in windrows, and often rest in such high relief above the drift, lying wholly upon its surface, as to lead to the conclusion that they were brought by icebergs. It is quite probable that they were transported by glaciers, but, instead of being moved along beneath their under-surfaces like common drift, they were borne upon the upper portions from the granite regions of the more distant parts of Canada. . As the ice melted away they were left as we find them now, formning lesser moraines. The glacier as it moved southward ground the rocks on which it rested into a fine paste usually called boulder-clay. When the glacier melted

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Chautauqua County, New York, Part 3

Author: Edson, Obed, 1832-; Merrill, Georgia Drew, editor Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Boston, Mass. : W.A. Fergusson Number of Pages: 1068

Author: Edson, Obed, 1832-; Merrill, Georgia Drew, editor
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : W.A. Fergusson
Number of Pages: 1068