Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Glaciers
Scientists believe the land in Maine has uplifted several times in the past
few hundred million years, although no one imagines the area as Vul-
can's nursery with volcanoes spewing lava as far as the eye can see.
In marked contrast to Maine's relatively sedate experience with geologic
fire, the most easily observed affects on the land have come from ice. Sev-
eral times, the most recent only about 10,000 years ago, a mere split sec-
ond in geologic time, great walls of ice more than a mile high have pushed
their way from north to south across the state. The sheer weight of the ice
alone is believed to have compressed the land nearly a mile below its
present contours.
The comings and goings of glaciers have left many distinct signs. Moun-
tains with long, gradual north slopes, and abrupt, broken-away south
faces show evidence of glaciation. The ice rode slowly up the back of the
mountains and then fractured pieces from the front.
The distinctive multiple peaks of Mount Desert Island, where nearly all
ridges run north to south, resulted from glaciation. The island was liter-
ally a long east-west ridge at one time. The glacier groaned out of the
north, came up against a bulwark of pink granite and pushed through in
several areas carving deep valleys now filled with deep lakes.
INTERESTING FACT:
Glacial movement created
Somes Sound, the only true fjord on the east coast of
the United States and a fissure which nearly cuts
Mount Desert Island in two.
On many high hills the rock has been worn smooth creating flat areas of
“glacial polish.” In other places deep grooves, like saw marks on the flat
surface of fine furniture, help trace the glacier's path.
Erratics
Rocks picked up and transported hundreds of miles by the glaciers were
left behind as the ice receded. Bearing no semblance to the nearby bed-
rock, they were dubbed glacial “erratics” and posed great puzzlement to
18th-century scholars in an age before the effects of great sheets of ice
