If you gain a little altitude, about 1500 feet, over Schenetady/Albany, and look to the West on a clear afternoon (when the sun is going down behind it), you can see the Allegheny Plateau (!!!), where it's eastern edge begins in western NY. It is a very striking view of what looks to be a formidable and sharp escarpment in the distance (this is not a glacial feature, I think it is a plate tectonics feature??), looks like you're seeing an exotique place in Africa somewhere. When driving to the west you can only notice streams and rivers run at the bottom of increasingly vee shaped hollows, a very much less dramatic way to notice the plateau. I mention this because the Allegheny Plateau is an oft referenced topic in early American history but puzzlingly hard to see in its' totality; hope I'm not the only one who thinks so, ha ha.
Is it visible from Ohio? Sorry had to ask
Thanks for a wonderful article!! Please write more about the geology of this area.
I’ve been on several of Sidney Horenstein’s walks in Ft. Tryon Park and other northern Manhattan and Bronx areas. Not only does he tell you about the geology but also the human history and NYC history of this area. I can remember a fact here and there but he remembers it ALL!!
3
Thank you for this article. I had just be joking with someone about how few of us know that Park Slope is at the terminal moraine. How strange a coincidence.
Having gone to an elementary school starting 60 years ago in Park Slope where they taught the history of NYC and Bklyn, I grew up knowing about the Ice Age in NY and terminal moraine.
There is (was?) a plaque on a boulder in the Bklyn Botanical Garden which indicates that the glacier ended there.
I've been fascinated with the geology of the area ever since. We need a good, current book about this. The only books I have found are fairly old, not well written for a general audience and pricey.
7
Oops Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Typing too fast, too late at night.
Thank you, thank you, NYT and Mr Broad for this article and the longer one in the Science section. Sometimes we need to step away from current issues and look at something much much older that still endures and that we can still appreciate. New York City was my first home in the USA, and I often return. Now, another reason to go.
2
This is a great and relaxing West Side Story. Many thanks indeed. We loved the writing and the photographs.
3
These articles are wonderful. I love reading John McPhee's works on geology and the illustrations and photos here bring much of what he talks about to life. Thank you so much.
2
As we view this dramatic ice age reminder, let's think about the drastic consequences of small variations in global temperature. During the last ice age when much of New York lay under that mile-high glacier, the average temperature of our planet was only 6 degrees Celsius colder than it is today. Now our world is about one degree Celsius warmer than it was in 1880. WIth human activity changing the climate, there will be no more ice ages. And scientists warn that our current fossil-fuel burning will lead to at least four degrees of warming by 2100. Getting off fossil fuels is the only road to safeguard human civilization under unthinkable climate conditions.
9
I'm putting this here as there are no comments on the original story.
I first ran into Sidney Horenstein when I attended a series of lectures at the Museum of Natural History about geology and the Revolutionary War in New York. I was really interested in the history, but he made the geology fascinating as well - who knew that the Americans were outflanked in the Battle of Brooklyn because some locals knew of a pass through the hills/terminal moraine? And every time I'm on the 1 train as it becomes elevated I think of the "Hollow Way" that was formed by an earthquake fault (of which, alarmingly, we have many in Manhattan!).
Since then, I've attended many lectures, walking tours and boat trips led by Mr. Horenstein. He knows absolutely everything and is truly a "rockconteur"!
8
For readers wishing more info and intel (and just an excellent read by a language master), get yourself a copy of Annals of the Former World by John McPhee. Plenty of tri-state geology, including all five boros, but it's really about how North America became North America. Time is measured in a mind-expanding manner in this book. It's thick and worth the investment in every page.
9
Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn runs along the top of the terminal moraine where it passes through that borough, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is on the slope where it descends from Eastern Parkway to about Empire Boulevard. Numerous boulders carried by the glacier and deposited at its southern end are labeled in the Garden with plaques telling the places from which the glacier carried them.
3
I grew up in Bellerose, Queens, in the 50s and early 60s and went to elementary school at P.S. 186, by Little Neck Parkway right where it starts to climb up the moraine. On the other side of Little Neck Pkwy was (still is?) a sledding hill that we called Suicide Hill. Finding a fossil was easy.
1
Head up to the highest point in Kissena Park Golf Course in Queens for a wonderful view of the Manhattan skyline from a high point on the terminal moraine.
2
I thought all of Long Island was a glacial moraine too??
3
Nice but too bad you did not explain the ice sheets waxed and waned over this area over 20 times in the last 2.3 million years of the current ice age. For over 90% of earth's history the were no polar ice caps. Once they formed beginning the current ice age they have moved back and forth in a 100,000 year rhythm caused by changes in the shape of our orbit.
NY has been shaped and re shaped many times by these glacial and interglacial periods in our ongoing "ice age". This dynamic fact puts this last warming beginning about 17,000 years ago in context.
We are now in the warm interglacial period but the ice age is not over while we have the rare feature of polar ice caps that will again expand into our latitudes as earth's orbit inevitably causes their resurgence in the future a few thousand years from now.
In the mean time, human activity is enhancing the greenhouse effect and we will see continued warming for at least a century even if a miracle could end our emissions - because CO2 has a half life in the atmosphere measured in hundreds of years.
We need to understand how dynamic our climate system is and the role of humans in further perturbing an unstable system.
As Voltaire suggested, those who tell the truth about history anger everyone.
6
Yes changes in earth's orbit is likely a factor in triggering these recurrent ice ages over millions of years. But those who think current global warming precludes any (relatively) imminent ice age may ultimately be proven wrong. For glacial melting and the changes in ocean salinity that it causes might in turn cause vital world-wide ocean current conveyors (that warm mid and high latitudes) to cease, triggering a rapid reverse in warming and even a new ice age. This is not to deny the fact of global warming- only to question its possible ultimate outcome. It's all an interconnected machine which we are still trying to more fully to comprehend.
As the writer here mentions, there were numerous periods of waxing and waning of the ice sheet near New York. Therefore as the last ice sheet retreated and stalled over NYC, there are actually several moraine edges to be found in the city - north of the main and most southernly moraine mentioned in the article.
Perhaps a good follow-up article would focus on the origin of the New Jersey Palisades across the Hudson.
Or an explanation for the clustering of New York's tallest skyscrapers in midtown and downtown due to differences in the location of supporting bedrock.
We live in a fascinating geological arena.
5
What about the view to the east from Fort Tryon?
Look at the photos and try to imagine a sheer wall of ice along the moraine. If the North Shore Towers are about 40 stories, a 2000 foot thick wall would be 4 or 5 times their height.
Two nice articles! It was fun following along in Google maps. It would be cool if Google had an overlay that could be applied to show the full path of the moraine.
15
I must echo what I've heard others say and also praise this article. One of my favorite points was the author admitting that he didn't know something. A great example for all of your readers, sir. If everyone could admit when they're wrong or when they learned something, this country would run a lot smoother. Wouldn't you say?
17
I strongly recommend a Tour with Dr. Horenstein. He gives regular tours of inwood including the park and his low tech method of demonstrating glacier formation (folded paper) will make everything clear.
13
Wonderful article! Why are "Ice Age" Hollywood Ray Romanoesque cartoons so much more vibrant, nearly real, storytellers of New York City's history than our educators? Long Island alone is a 12,000 year old tale - longer, of course, with 100,000 years of glacial ice piled high - but three of our five boroughs (Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens) did not appear until the ice melted. "The Dutch founded NY as New Amsterdam in 1624 or 1625" is a stale uninformed story. Thank you for this much needed story.
11
Mazel tov to The NY Times for this discovery! I grew up in the Queens side of Floral Park and can recall hiking up to the "high ground," which was all woods. In the late 50's it started getting developed and finally the Towers went up. We all knew we lived in the path of a glacier and the high ground marked its end moraine.
10
you need look no further than Central Park to see the striations ( grooves formed by ice with rock debris) moving over the landscape, cutting into the boulders.
7
How the Ice Age Shaped New York was a great article. As a somewhat/very amateur geologist I have always known that Long Island, Cape Cod and Block Island were part of the moraine, but never really gave much thought as to how it manifested itself across the rest of the country. Thanks for opening another door to explore.
13
cool, now, what's a Kettle pond?
6
'A kettle is a shallow, sediment-filled body of water formed by retreating glaciers or draining floodwaters. The kettles are formed as a result of blocks of ice calving from glaciers and becoming submerged in the sediment on the outwash plain. Another source is the sudden drainage of an ice-dammed lake. When the block melts, the hole it leaves behind is a kettle. As the ice melts, ramparts can form around the edge of the kettle hole. The lakes that fill these holes are seldom more than 10 m deep and eventually become filled with sediment. In acid conditions, a kettle bog may form but in alkaline conditions, it will be kettle peatland."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_(landform)
You could have done this too.......
A kettle pond is formed when a part of the receding glacier’s face breaks off and is partially buried. Upon melting, a small pond is formed. Check out Alley Pond Park and Cunningham Park in Queens for examples.
5
Doesn't the Grand Central Parkway run along the top of the moraine, in part?
4
yes
2
Yes! In the area around Creedmore Hospital, you get a wonderful southern view of the glacial outwash plain from the Parkway.
2