Cedar Creek Canyon, also called simply Cedar Canyon, is a
topographical
Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps.
Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...
feature located in
Allen County, Indiana
Allen County is a county in the U.S. state of Indiana. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 385,410, making it the third-most populous county in Indiana. The county seat and largest city is Fort Wayne, the second largest city in Indiana. ...
, United States. It is a very straight, narrow
gorge
A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...
about deep that contains part of the lower segment of
Cedar Creek, the largest
tributary
A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...
of the
St. Joseph River. The canyon originated at the end of the last
ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...
as a
tunnel valley
A tunnel valley is a U-shaped valley originally cut under the glacial ice near the margin of continental ice sheets such as that now covering Antarctica and formerly covering portions of all continents during past glacial ages. They can be as l ...
, a channel under the
Erie Lobe of the
Wisconsin Glacier
The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cord ...
that discharged meltwalter under considerable pressure into the ancestral
Eel River, a tributary of the
Wabash River
The Wabash River ( French: Ouabache) is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 13, 2011 river that drains most of the state of Indiana in the United States. It flows fro ...
. Cutting through the north limb of the
Wabash Moraine, a debris deposit left by the retreating ice, the discharge left a large
outwash fan
An outwash fan is a fan-shaped body of sediments deposited by braided streams from a melting glacier. Sediment locked within the ice of the glacier gets transported by the streams of meltwater, and deposits on the outwash plain, at the terminus of ...
that blocked the Eel, diverting its upper portion into the canyon in a classic example of
stream piracy that formed today's Cedar Creek. This was part of a general drainage reversal that occurred in northeastern Indiana as the
Maumee River
The Maumee River (pronounced ) ( sjw, Hotaawathiipi; mia, Taawaawa siipiiwi) is a river running in the United States Midwest from northeastern Indiana into northwestern Ohio and Lake Erie. It is formed at the confluence of the St. Joseph and ...
opened and captured drainage that was previously part of the
watershed of the Wabash. While the lower Eel remained a tributary of the Wabash, that it formerly drained became part of the Maumee watershed.
The flow reversal in lower Cedar Creek was probably accelerated by the
downcutting
Downcutting, also called erosional downcutting, downward erosion or vertical erosion is a geological process by hydraulic action that deepens the channel of a stream or valley by removing material from the stream's bed or the valley's floor. The ...
of the St. Joseph River, which increased the velocity of its tributaries, causing them to erode toward their
headwaters
The headwaters of a river or stream is the farthest place in that river or stream from its estuary or downstream confluence with another river, as measured along the course of the river. It is also known as a river's source.
Definition
The ...
(
headward erosion
Headward erosion is erosion at the origin of a stream channel, which causes the origin to move back away from the direction of the stream flow, lengthening the stream channel.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak It can also refer to ...
). One of these tributaries east of the tunnel valley probably became the downstream portion of Cedar Creek, later capturing flow from the valley itself and then, finally, the entire upstream segment of the ancestral Eel.
Today's Cedar Creek Canyon is a picturesque, forested area just north of
Fort Wayne
Fort Wayne is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Indiana, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 as of the 2020 Censu ...
that includes both
upland and
floodplain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...
environments. The portion of Cedar Creek that flows through it, from
river mile
A river mile is a measure of distance in miles along a river from its mouth. River mile numbers begin at zero and increase further upstream. The corresponding metric unit using kilometers is the river kilometer. They are analogous to vehicle road ...
13.7 to the creek's
confluence
In geography, a confluence (also: ''conflux'') occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main stem); o ...
with the St. Joseph, is officially designated as an "Outstanding State Resource Water" and is one of four streams in Indiana's Natural, Scenic and Recreational Rivers system. The Vandolah Nature Preserve, owned by ACRES Land Trust, Inc., includes parts of the canyon. The nearby Bicentennial Woods Nature Preserve has terrain features similar to the canyon, as it contains a relatively large tributary of the Cedar Creek. The river has several Geocaches along the banks.
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. 47. May be found in pdf format a
*Sunderman, Jack A., "The Three Faces of Cedar Creek," ''ACRES Quarterly'', v. 39, no. 4 (Fall 2000), pp. 6–7. May be found a
312 Indiana Administrative Code 7-2-3327 Indiana Administrative Code 2-1.5-19
External links
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20100917063917/http://acreslandtrust.org/templates/System/details.asp?id=44551&PID=635638 ACRES Land Trust: Vandolah Nature Preservebr>Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor
{{Coord, 41, 14, N, 85, 05, W, region:US-IN, display=title
Rivers of Allen County, Indiana
Canyons and gorges of Indiana This category contains canyons in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Indiana
Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is ...