The rocks of Turners Falls reveal far more geological history than just the happenings of the early Jurassic period 200 million years ago. Climb the stairs from Avenue A to K Street, which runs by Our Lady of Czestochowa Roman Catholic Church. About 100 feet from K Street, you should see the reddish sandstones of the Turners Falls formation, but they will have a notable polish on their surface.
THINGS TO KNOW
The smoothing-over of the rocks resulted from the movement of glacial ice over them approximately 25,000 years ago, in the Pleistocene epoch.
A mountain of ice and snow 1 to 2 miles thick and the size of a continent covered Canada and the northern states of the U.S. from about 1.6 million to 25,000 years ago. This continental glacier did not remain static but grew and shrank as climate cooled and warmed over this period. New England experienced at least four of these glacial advances and retreats over the past 1 million years. Only the last, called the Wisconsinan, left much of a trace.
As the glacier moved south into Massachusetts, its southern margin fanned out into lobes bulging southward. Unimaginably heavy, these ice sheets scoured the landscape down to the bedrock. If boulders were lodged at the base of the ice sheet, the glacier would drag them over the bedrock, scouring it with grooves that geologists call striations.Even without boulders, the pressure from the ice alone could smooth and polish the rocks, as if they were gems in a jeweler’s shop.
NEXT STOP
Go back down the stairs to Avenue A and walk to the corner of 5th Street.
