The Ice-Age Legacy of Mount Auburn Cemetery
May 5, 2013
Cover: Forest Pond engraving by James Smillie, 1847. A kettle pond, Forest Pond was filled by the Cemetery in 1915-18.
The Ice-Age Legacy of Mount Auburn Cemetery A presentation and walking tour with Robin Hazard Ray An Ice Age is any era in which the Earth is all or partly covered by ice. Though our planet has experienced a warming period recently (the last 11,000 years, with many ups and downs), it is still in an Ice Age! The current one has lasted about 2 million years, with long intervals of warmer climate. During the most recent period of glaciation in the northern hemisphere, great thicknesses of ice covered the northern continents from the Arctic down to New York and deep into the Midwest. The sediments – sands, gravels, and clays – that make up Mt. Auburn Cemetery were created by the crushing of bedrock beneath and alongside flowing glaciers. The sedimentary material 1831 Map of Mount Auburn Cemetery by Alexander Wadsworth. traveled south inside a Notice the original shape and form of the kettle ponds Garden Pond (now glacier or series of glaciers Halcyon Lake) and Meadow Pond (now Auburn Lake). that occupied a valley, now buried, that runs from Roxbury across the Charles River north through Wilmington. The endpoint of a glacier, where the largest amounts of sediment are dropped upon melting, are called moraines. The Fresh Pond Moraine lies immediately to our north. The moraine sediments dropped by these glaciers as they melted were reworked by streams beneath and in front of melting glaciers (delta sediments). In some places they are poorly sorted mixes of sand and gravel (till, i.e., unsorted material dropped and left in place as the glacier melted); in other places they are well sorted, with various layers of clay, sand, and pebbles (outwash, i.e., material that was sorted by water flowing out from the retreating
glacier). In the Boston area, the glacial sediments appear as pairs of layers; the lowermost is till, then outwash, then till again, etc. Most of Mt. Auburn is classified as “Outwash 1,” that is, the earliest of three outwash layers found in the Boston Basin. Fossils barnacles and other marine creatures found in analogous sediments show that these areas were at or below sea level at the time. The sediments in this area appear to be about 14,500 years old. This is younger than the maximum extent of Pleistocene-age glaciation, Current map of Mount Auburn Cemetery. which occurred about 18,000 years ago. Two later glacial lobes – large tongues of ice branching off from a larger glacier – met at the current site of Mt. Auburn, one flowing south from Fresh Pond, and one flowing northeast from Allston/Brighton. These ice lobes reworked and overturned much of “Outwash 1,” further complicating an already complicated geologic picture. As the glaciers melted, blocks of ice large and small remained buried within the till. Upon melting, they formed kettle ponds. In other areas, streams of top of the glacier gradually ponded, choked with sediments, and stagnated. When the ice melted, these ponds of sediments were eased onto the ground below, forming hillocks of sediment called kames. Landforms at Mt. Auburn have been substantially altered by human activity, including filling, leveling, farming, and of course burials and monument construction. Nevertheless, the cemetery grounds represent a relatively well preserved glacial landscape, with eskers (Indian Ridge Path), kames (Harvard Corporation Hill and Tower Hill), and kettle ponds (Consecration Dell, Halcyon Lake, Auburn Lake).
Stop 1: Indian Ridge Path Notice the sinuous curve of Indian Ridge Path, and its steep sides. This is an esker, a long, narrow, often winding bar of glacial sediments that formed underneath the glacier itself. Meltwater carves channels beneath the ice, which are then gradually choked with sediments. When the glacier melts, the esker is left as a snaking aboveground feature. Eskers may be classified as an endangered landform, because they are very easily mined for road and cement materials. Sand and gravel companies typically start at one end of the esker and excavate it all the way to the end.
Stop 2: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), #580 Indian Ridge Path Longfellow was one of a close circle of friends that included Louis Agassiz. Both belonged to the famed Saturday Club, whose members included poet James Russell Lowell, physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, botanist Asa Gray, Senator Charles Sumner, and mathematician Charles Peirce (all buried at Mt. Auburn), as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Longfellow wrote a charming poem for Agassiz’s fiftieth birthday. “The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz,” May 28, 1859 It was fifty years ago In the pleasant month of May, In the beautiful Pays de Vaud, A child in its cradle lay. And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: “Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee.” “Come, wander with me,” she said, “Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God.” And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe. And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvellous tale. So she keeps him still a child, And will not let him go, Though at times his heart beats wild
For the beautiful Pays de Vaud; Though at times he hears in his dreams The Ranz des Vaches of old, And the rush of mountain streams From glaciers clear and cold; And the mother at home says, “Hark! For his voice I listen and yearn; It is growing late and dark, And my boy does not return!”
Longfellow’s family lot sits on Indian Ridge Path, a prominent esker.
Stop 3: Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), # 2147 Lime Ave. Holmes was a renowned physician and poet who was a member of the Saturday Club. He wrote a poem on the occasion of Agassiz’s departure for Brazil. Agassiz went to Brazil in hopes of finding evidence of his theory that, during the last Ice Age, continental glaciers had covered all of the earth’s surface, effectively wiping out all land species. He triumphantly announced his “evidence” of Brazilian glaciation, but his results, and his career, were soon discredited. It is now accepted that Brazil was not glaciated during the Pleistocene Ice Age. His poem “A Farewell to Agassiz” reads in part: The mountain hearts are yearning, The lava-torches burning, The rivers bend to meet him, The forests bow to greet him, It thrills the spinal column Of fossil fishes solemn, And glaciers crawl the faster To the feet of their old master!
Stop 4: Auburn Lake Auburn Lake lies just to the southwest of the Indian Ridge Path esker. Its elongate shape suggests that its basin might have been plumbed by a lobe of ice, which depressed the underlying sediments and then melted. Its shape has changed little from how it appears on the first survey map of the cemetery, dated 1831. You will remember from the slide show the picture of the esker flanked on both sides by water. This esker–kettle feature is quite similar, though smaller in scale.
Auburn Lake, circa 1865, from a stereoview.
Stop 5: Asa Gray (1810-1888), #3904 Holly Path Asa Gray, a botanist at Harvard, and Agassiz often competed for funds and stature within the Harvard and scientific communities; in these competitions, Agassiz, with his outgoing personality and strong social connections, very often bested Gray, who was of a more retiring and modest character. By outliving Agassiz, Gray was afforded the opportunity of writing the latter’s obituary, rather than vice versa. He wrote of Agassiz, with a trace of bitterness, “For the rest, we all know how almost everything he desired—and he wanted nothing except for science—was cheerfully supplied to his hand by admiring givers” (Gray, “Louis Agassiz,” Andover Review [January 1886]).
Stop 6: Consecration Dell Conservation Dell is a classic kettle pond. It was formed when a large block of ice depressed the sediments immediately underneath it, and later melted. Other kettle ponds in our region are Halcyon Lake (Mt. Auburn), Fresh Pond, Walden Pond, and Spy Pond. The Dell was once ringed by granite curbing and used to be dredged. Today Mount Auburn is committed to restoring native flora and fauna. Invasive and foreign plant species have been removed from its banks. It is currently home to several threatened animal species, including turtles, spotted salamanders, and Great Horned Owls.
Left: Consecration Dell, circa 1901, looking north from the base of Mount Auburn.
Right: Consecration Dell, 2005, same view. Notice the results of a Native Woodland Restoration Project that began in 1997.
Stop 7: Tower Hill The Tower at Mt. Auburn was erected in 1853. Its base is about 135 feet above sea level, and the shape of the hill strongly suggests that it is a kame, that is, a stratified hillock of sediments deposited in and reworked by a stream on top of glacial ice, then dumped as the glacier melted away. From the tower’s ramparts (62 feet above its base) one can look north up the former valley, from whence flowed the ice that brought the sediments to the area. To find north from the top of the tower, look for Bigelow Chapel (gray Gothic structure), which lies just about due north of the Tower. Beyond it in the distance you can see the Winchester highlands, which were the western boundary of the former glacial valley. Turning to the southwest, you can see bits and pieces of the industrial infrastructure left over from Watertown’s formerly thriving sand-and-gravel industry (note the yellow storage tanks). It is very likely that there were other eskers and kames in that area, which were mined for fill and building materials.
View of Washington Tower, circa 1860s.
Stop 8: Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, “Louis Agassiz” (1807-1873), #2640 Bellwort Path Upon his death, colleagues in his native Switzerland had a beautiful memorial stone, a glacial erratic, shipped over to be placed on Agassiz’s grave.
Glossary Delta: The triangle of sediments that builds up at the mouth of a river or stream. Erratic: A large rock transported by flowing ice to a place far from its origin. Esker: A long, snaking bar of sand and gravel, formed in a channel of meltwater beneath a glacier. Glacier: A body of recrystallized snow that is in motion; ice bodies that are stationary, called ice fields, are not glaciers. Glaciers may be “alpine” or “valley” type, that is, relatively small in scale and only a few dozen to a few hundreds meters thick, or “continental,” that is large-scale and very massive, e.g. hundred to thousands of meters thick. Ice Age: A prolonged period of cold (ten of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years) during which masses of continental ice build up and flow across vast portions of the globe. There have been numerous such ice ages in Earth history; we are currently in an ice age, though experiencing a relatively warm spell within that ice age. Kame: A small but rather steep hillock of stratified glacial sediment. Kettle Pond (or Kettle Hole): A bowl-shaped depression in an area of glacial deposits, left behind when a lump of buried ice melts. Moraine: An accumulation of sediments deposited when a glacier melts. Lateral moraines build up along the sides of valley glaciers; terminal moraines accumulate at the snout of a glacier and can be very large, depending on the size and age of the glacier. Both Long Island and Cape Cod represent terminal moraines left behind when the continental ice melted here roughly 14–11,000 years ago. Outwash: Sorted (boulders here, sand there, clay somewhere else) and stratified sediments that build up at the head of a glacier. Outwash is reworked till. Pleistocene Epoch: The period of time just before the Present (or Holocene), during which continental ice covered much of the North American continent. About 2.5 million to 11,000 years before present. Till: Unstratified and unsorted sediments “dumped” as a glacier melts.
Further Reading Edmund Blair Bolles, The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1999). A narrative history of the formation of the theory of ice ages, featuring the lives of Kent Kane (poet), Louis Agassiz (the professor) and Charles Lyell (the politician). Brian Fagan, ed., The Complete Ice Age: How Climate Shaped the World (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009). An excellent introduction to all aspects of our current ice age: planet wobbles, Neanderthals, megafauna, &c. Christoph Irmscher, Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). The latest biography of Louis Agassiz. James W. Skehan, Roadside Geology of Massachusetts (Missoula: Mountain Press, 2001).
Helpful Websites The Swiss have created a stunning photo glossary of glacial features, an education unto itself: http://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/index-en.html Another helpful photo guide to glaciers and glacial features is from Eastern Illinois University: http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfjps/1300/glacier_photos.html Finally, there is a wonderful online exhibit from the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City called “Ice: A Victorian Romance,” which charts the early study and exploration of ice features, glaciation, and the polar regions. It includes a number of illustrations from Agassiz’s Studies on Glaciers. http://www.lindahall.org/events_exhib/exhibit/exhibits/ice/index.shtml
We invite you to participate in the programs of the Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery. Membership information is available at the Gatehouse information rack and the Office.
Since its founding in 1831, Mount Auburn Cemetery has retained its original purpose of being a natural setting for the commemoration of the dead and for the comfort and inspiration of the bereaved and the general public. Its grounds offer a place for reflection and for observation of nature — trees, shrubs, flowering plants, ponds, gentle hills, and birds both resident and migrant. Visitors come to study our national heritage by visiting the graves of noted Americans and enjoying the great variety of monuments and memorials. Mount Auburn Cemetery began the “rural” cemetery movement out of which grew America’s public parks. Its beauty and historic associations make it an internationally renowned landscape. Designated a National Historic Landmark, Mount Auburn remains an active, nonsectarian cemetery offering a wide variety of interment and memorialization options. Walk and research prepared by Robin Hazard Ray.
friends@mountauburn.org The Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery is a nonprofit charitable trust promoting the appreciation and preservation of the cultural, historic and natural resources of America’s first garden cemetery, founded in 1831.
©Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery, 2013
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