Maumee Torrent

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The Maumee Torrent was a catastrophic draining of Glacial Lake Maumee, the ancestor of present-day Lake Erie, that occurred during the late Wisconsin glaciation. It happened when the waters of Lake Maumee, possibly in response to an advance of the ice front at the eastern end of the lake, overtopped a "sag" or low spot in the Fort Wayne Moraine, which was a deposit of glacial debris that acted as a natural dam at the site of present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana. This unleashed a massive flow of water that scoured a one- to two-mile-wide outlet running southwest to the Wabash River known as the Wabash-Erie Channel, which probably followed the course of earlier, less massive drainage. The channel or "sluiceway," now dry except for a small stream called the Little River (also sometimes called the "Little Wabash River"), is the largest topographical feature in Allen County, Indiana. As much as 30 feet of fine sand, silt and organic sediments were deposited in the channel before drainage reversed and was captured by the present-day Maumee River. U.S. Route 24 between Fort Wayne and Huntington follows the channel.

[edit] References

• Water Resource Availability in the Maumee River Basin, Indiana, Water Resource Assessment 96-5, Indianapolis:Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water, 1996, p. 37; p. 48. May be found in pdf format at [1]