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Bloomfield Blossoms: p. 048-049

Smith, Kay, 1925-

Bloomfield Township Public Library

Lake Maumee

Bloomfield Township (Mich.)

Geology -- Michigan

GB01a026

part of 'Bloomfield Blossoms' by Kay Smith

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OLD LAKE MAUMEE COVERED BLOOMFIELD IN PREHISTORIC TIMES The geological formation of Michigan and particularly of Bloomfield presents a complex picture. Beginning several billion years ago, cataclysm after cataclysm covered our area with four different advancing and receding glaciers. In between upheavals, vegetation and animal life slowly developed, only to disappear with a new earth-shaking disturbance. Our major concern is with the retreat of the last great glacier. As it melted away a huge lake, Lake Maumee, covered Bloomfield. In its ancestral stage, it was the parent of Lakes Huron and Erie, and in its middle period, ice obstructed the natural outlet of the lake to the east and caused the waters of the two great lakes to extend far beyond their present boundaries. In this era, the lake covered only the southern half of the Township. The shoreline of Middle Lake Maumee ran from the banks of the Rouge River opposite Franklin Village northeastward, crossing Woodward Avenue at Charing Cross Road. The last bits of the beaches of the lake can be seen in the gravel patches by the stone gateway columns at Charing Cross. The shoreline ran northward from there, crossing Adams Road above Wattles, circling through Troy and entering the Township again midway between Quarton and Maple Roads, moving southwestward and around the lower end of Birmingham south of Maple. The escarps, or steep slopes of the old beaches are visible on the Oakland Hills Golf Course, on holes 8 and 11 on the south course, and 10 and 18 on the north course. Pockets of water or bays from the lake were left as the water receded, forming not only our 30-odd lakes and ponds, but the gravel pits in the northeast end of the Township as well.