Kankakee Outwash Plain

The Kankakee Outwash Plain is a flat plain in the Kankakee River valley in northwestern Indiana and northeastern Illinois. It is just south of the Valparaiso Moraine. It was formed during the Wisconsin Glaciation. As the glacier, stopped at the Valparaiso Moraine, melted, the meltwater was carried away to the outwash plain. On the south side of the moraine, where the elevation drops, the meltwaters eroded away valleys carrying sand and mud with them. As the muddy meltwater reached the valley where the slope lessened, the water slowed down depositing the sand on the outwash plain. This created a smooth, flat, and sandy plain. Before its draining, the Kankakee Marsh, located on the outwash plain, was one of the largest freshwater marshes in the United States. [Schoon]

Glacial Plain

The Grand Kankakee Marsh is the result of the last glacial age. The Wisconsin Glacial Age began 70,000 years ago [Features, p 34] and removed all traces of the previous glacial topography. It wasn’t until the last 3,000 years that the glaciers left the topography we know today. Beginning around 15,000 years ago [ Features, p 35] , The Michigan lobe to the north and the Huron-Saginaw lobe to the east, retreated back, leaving the area that was to become the Kankakee’s valley was clear of ice. Beginning 14,000 years ago, the head of the glacier stood along a line across the middle of Lake, Lake, and LaPorte Counties. Melting ceased to outpace the arrival of new ice from the north. Over thousands of years, the glacier moved ground rock and soil southward, only to release along this edge of ice, building up a ridge that matched the front of the glacier. [ Features, p 36]

But that is not all that it was doing. As soil built up along this front, the spring and summer melt was also releasing large volumes of water. The water moving and sorting the soils. South of the glacial front, water accumulated faster than it could drain, forming a glacial lake Kankakee. Today, the bedrock is hidden deep beneath the sediments left by the glaciers, but it still played a roll in developing the lay of the land. At Momence, Illinois, a ridge of limestone was exposed at the surface. Here, all the water flowing off the front of the glacier had to pass, for south of what became the Kankakee, the Iroquois Moraine rose. Slight though it might be, it was higher than the limestone ridge. Between the Iroquois Moraine and the Momence Ridge, the waters from the glacier collected.

Lacustrine deposits are those deposited in lake water and only when the lake drains or the land rises, does it become dry land. Most of the soils throughout the counties surrounding the Kankakee are loamy (up to a quarter clay, quarter to half silt with less than half being sand.) [ Soil Survey, p 110] The outwash plain is underlain by sand with gravel inter-bedded throughout. The prevailing westerly winds began to treat the ‘Lake Kankakee’ like the shores of Lake Michigan. Dunes began to form along the south and eastern shoreline. Where ice blocks had been left behind, sand filled the depressions. Run-off from the Valparaiso Moraine built [ Features, p 52] outwash ridges of sand leading into the lake. On the south, the winds built dunes.

As the volume of water decreased from the glacier melting northward, the lake slowing drained and filled. Not being able to cut a channel through the limestone ridge in Momence, the Kankakee Lake became 500,000 acres (202,346 ha) of marshland.

New Theory

Recent research on the ‘Sand Islands’ of the Kankakee reveal that the sand is the same type and age as the sands deep in the dunes along Lake Michigan. According to Valparaiso University professor Ron Janke. This would mean that the dunes south of the Kankakee River were formed before the Valparaiso Moraine and at a time when current theories believe the northern stretches of Indiana were still under the glacial ice. [ Project]

See also

*Tinley Moraine
*Calumet Shoreline
*Glenwood Shoreline
*Kankakee, Illinois

Footnotes

Source

*Schoon, Kenneth J., "Calumet Beginnings", 2003, Indiana University Press, p. 24 ISBN 025334218X
*"1816-1966, Natural Features of Indiana"; Indiana Academy of Science, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, 1966, Symposium, April 22-23, 1966, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN
*"Soil Survey of Porter County, Indiana"; USDA, Soil Conservation Service, Purdue University, Agricultural Experiment Station, IDNR, Soil and Water Conservation Committee; 1976
*"Kankakee Project: Sand Islands Reveal new, Old Clues, VU Professor finds surprising evidence for origin of dunes"; Charles M. Bartholomew; Post Tribune, July 6, 2008