Geology of Connecticut - Ice Age

Ice Age

During Ice Ages, glacial activity shaped much of New England’s landscape, eroding mountains, leaving glacial till scattered everywhere, and forming glacial lakes. At its greatest extent, one of these glaciers leaves behind a moraine which becomes today's Long Island. One of the biggest glacial lakes of the time was Glacial Lake Hitchcock. It formed when the Laurentide ice sheet retreated and glacial meltwater began to accumulate at the glacier’s terminal moraine in Rocky Hill, Connecticut and back up into the Connecticut River. The glacial lake left behind a soft, varved landscape, gathering silt and sand in the summertime due to the influx of glacial meltwater and clay in the wintertime as the lake froze until it was later drained.