J.W. Spencer : his life in Missouri and Georgia, and work on proglacial lakes

Geoscience Canada, Dec, 2004 by Gerard V. Middleton

RESEARCH ON THE GREAT LAKES, 1888-1893

Fieldwork

Spencer devoted the whole of the summer of 1888 to fieldwork on the Great Lakes. In May he wrote to Dawson from Ann Arbor, Michigan (DP, May 12, 1888): "I had just returned here, preparatory to going to Canada, to commence upon beaches about Huron and Erie. I had been following up Gilbert's Ohio beaches, in order that I might make a correlation on the Canadian side of the Lakes. When they disappear by interruption then Gilbert & Chamberlin thrust in a glacial dam. They regard all the stratified Pleistocene of the St. Lawrence as newer than even the terraces & lake ridges."

Two weeks later he elaborated further (DP, May 21, 1888):

   "I went to Michigan to bind together facts
   collected last year, which were not clear--nor
   could they be clearly understood at
   that time. However, I am now able to
   dissipate more of Gilbert's ice dams. His
   four beaches in Ohio I have carried up to
   Lake Huron.... I have not followed them
   westward yet.

   "In a conversation with Prof. Chamberlin
   in Ann Arbor (he chanced to be there),
   he insisted upon ice dams (that is before I
   had finally settled the question in
   Mich[igan].) I asked him how his dam
   could be across the upper parts of Huron
   (closing the Mackinaw outlet, and I had
   not then discovered the positive proof of
   the upper channel at Lapeer--connecting
   with L[ake] Michigan) with many beaches
   400 feet higher. His reply was he doubted
   the beaches. It piqued me for I know a
   fossil beach better than nine-tenths of
   geologists, for they are not always easily
   learned, & before I had learned to know
   them I made many mistakes. But this
   outlet by Lapeer overthrows the validity
   of his dam at Mackinaw St[rait] and more.
   On the southeastern side of Lake Huron
   I have got the exact series that occur on
   the western side, and so I doubt not I will
   be able to connect these high level beaches.
   The result will be positive proof of open
   water in from seven to ten places between
   Gilbert's Glacial Lake Erie and the low
   country of the Mississippi and Ohio
   valleys, and the sea."

He asked Dawson to loan him a level for the rest of the summer (later he told Dawson he had used it to run nearly 100 miles of levels that summer): it had arrived by July, when he wrote again, this time from Lucan, Ontario (DP, July 11, 1888):

   "I have just circled around here from a
   journey of over 400 miles in two weeks
   and a half, of which over 150 were
   accomplished on foot. Tomorrow two of
   my old graduates join me in the work
   [W.W. Clendenin, from Missouri, and
   W.J. Spillman: see Sources and Notes],
   and taking a carriage, we are going to
   camp out.

   "Exclusive of outliers there are four
   beaches between Lake Erie and an
   altitude of 900' above the sea. But north
   of Lake Erie they were hard to follow as
   there were so many peninsulas and bays ...
   "I had decided at first to follow out the
   Iroquois Beach & get its connections with
   Lake Champlain clays before doing my
   work in Ontario, but I changed my plan
   and will not do that now, as I want to get
   the northern equivalent of the rise on the
   beaches as soon as possible & find they
   are continuous to the north (thus melting
   the ice dams) and to finish getting the
   evidence of connection of Georgian Bay
   to Lake Ont[ario]."