The Little River Valley Story

The Little River Valley Story. . , The valley of the Little River, where you are standing now, was carved out about 14,500 years ago when the waters of Glacial Lake Maumee overtopped the Fort Wayne Moraine, a ridge composed of glacial sediment, unleashing a catastrophic flood. The valley became a 25,000-acre marsh teeming with wildlife, where Native Americans hunted. Settlers later called in the Great Marsh., One of the streams meandering through the Great Marsh was the Little River, the headwater tributary of the Wabash. It became famous as the principal water route between the St. Marys River of the Great Lakes system and the Wabash, which led eventually to the Mississippi., In the late 1800s most of the Great Marsh was drained as farmland, but it still flooded often. The Wabash and Erie Canal, and later the Inter-Urban Railroad, were built along what is now the north edge of Eagle Marsh. In 2005, The Little River Wetlands Project bought this land and began to restore it as a wetland preserve. Now Eagle Marsh is full of wildlife again.