flood & mud

flood and mud. In over your head…. , During the last ice age, a glacier one-mile thick towered over the spot where you are standing. When it began to melt about 16,000 years ago, the water backed up in the valley creating a giant lake 220 miles long. Early geologists named it Lake Hitchcock and it stretched from Rocky Hill, Connecticut, northward to St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Pocumtuck Ridge, to the east, was just an island in the lake. Flowing streams and rivers deposited sediment on the lake bottom, which eventually sat near the level of the steeple of Deerfield's First church. By about 14,000 years ago, the lake had drained and the Connecticut and other rivers began cutting through the old lake bottom. The terrace you are standing on was once the bank of the Deerfield River which cut new channels and carried off much of the muddy lake deposits. Regular river flooding continues to deposit silt along the river's banks, enriching the soil and reshaping the land.