By Dr. Terry H. Martin

(Reprinted with kind permission of the Author and the Cattaraugus County Dept. of Economic Development, Planning and Tourism. The following article originally appeared in the Newsletter of the Western New York Section of the American Planning Association, Special Edition No. 1, Spring/Summer 2001.)

Our Western New York region was crushed under the weight of mile high glaciers during the last ice age. These glaciers followed ancient valley bottoms and were driven along by a huge mass called the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered the top of North America with spreading rivers of ice. The ice moved out of the arctic regions, spreading across what is now known as Canada. It plowed, gouged, and ground the earth beneath its underbelly as it pushed towards the United States. This process created the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes, and scoured Buffalo and Erie County as it spread relentlessly towards Cattaraugus County.

When the leading edges of ice were halfway through the valleys of Cattaraugus County, the rate of melting began to match the rate of forward movement. The melting front edges dumped debris in Southern Erie County and northern Cattaraugus County, shaping geologic features in Sardinia and across the middle of Cattaraugus County. The northern third of our county now drains into the Atlantic Ocean and the southern portion drains into the Gulf of Mexico, with the divide roughly following the line where the glaciers had finally ended.

In pre-glacial ages the Allegheny River flowed northward into what today is the drainage basin for Lake Erie which flows through the St. Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean. When the glaciers arrived, and ended in Cattaraugus County, they progressively thwarted the river's northward flow, and over time diverted the river into a large 50-mile wide u-turn. It now flows south to Pittsburgh, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico. Today the river follows what is today the northern edge of the Allegany State Park, which was not crushed by the glaciers.

With warm weather, the glaciers melted back to the arctic regions where remnants still exist, like seeds waiting to grow. The Lake Erie Basin was revealed along with the rolling hills and beautiful valleys that we see today in southern Erie County and northern Cattaraugus County. The Village of Ellicottville and the Holiday Valley Ski Resort are located in the very midst of this post-glacial topography just ten miles north of Salamanca and the Allegany State Park. People on the ski slopes today can easily imagine looking down at a valley filled with melting ice, mastodons, and the ancestors of the mound people as they hunted and traveled through the region.

As the weather warmed over the centuries, birds, animals, plants, trees, and people began to thrive in the ecosystems to the south of where the glaciers had ended. Wetlands, grasslands and forests stretching into what are now Ohio and Pennsylvania were nourished by glacial meltwater. Topsoil began to accumulate as the glaciers retreated. As the climate continued to warm, these many events created a temporary "lost world," a bountiful environment fed by glacial meltwater in the Allegheny River Valley bottom, which, having been altered by the glaciers, now curved in a broad 50-mile arc across the southern half of Cattaraugus County.

This lost world became a home for human settlements, which Seneca Nation leaders in the 1800's said were not known to the Seneca Indians. Archaeologists have found evidence of human settlements all around the Great Lakes region dating back 7,000 or more years. One site near Pittsburgh (which became connected to our "lost world" when the Allegheny River shifted southward), apparently dates back more than 20,000 years. Over the ages, these ancestors migrated through the area and left numerous sites and artifacts, including burial mounds. Some of these have been found in the Town of Randolph in Cattaraugus County, near where the glaciers ended. We can speculate that ancestors of mound people lived in Cattaraugus County after the glaciers melted, caught in pre-history, between different ages, between the ice to the north and the mastodons and other now extinct animals to the south. This is why I call the Allegheny River basin and its watersheds "The Land at Glaciers' End".

Like Native Americans, plants, fish, and wildlife, we have all now become a permanent part of the Great Lakes ecosystems. The major difference, however, is that our bulldozer mentality and our new technologies are operating against natural rhythms instead of being dependent upon them. We are polluting air, water and land, and waste disposal is becoming a chronic, expensive problem.


Today, instead of the Laurentide Ice Sheet moving over us, we see urban sprawl moving towards Cattaraugus County. Instead of glaciers, we see a growing tide of wasteful land use practices and consumption of energy which, left unchecked, can overflow and damage the natural beauty and resources that were created by the ice age. We want new growth, but also, we want to preserve a legacy for our children and their descendants.

We need to build our civilization carefully among these beautiful hills and valleys and along these old glacial pathways. The First Americans, or the ancestors of the mound builders, faced overwhelming challenges. Wearing clothing made from furs and plant fibers, and using tools made from stones, bones and wood, they stood in the very heart of this "lost world," on the banks of an ice-fed, surging river. They looked alternately at the shrinking, tapered edges of the glaciers as far to the north as the eye could see, and at the animals such as mastodons in the river valley. These ancestral men and women eventually decided to build a distinctive community for themselves and their children. They had their own culture, and they honored their dead. They decided to stay in the "Land at Glaciers End". Whatever happened to them is still a mystery.

Now that we have decided to stay in the "Land at Glaciers' End," will we be able to find a balance with nature? Will our quality of life survive the coming age?




Sepia Canyon Wall © Phil Palen. Horizontal Rock Outcrop © Julie Broyles.
All other photos this page © Ray Vaughan.