Geology of the Sandy Stream Area

There was a time, before the last ice age, wherein Unity, Maine was covered by oceans. These ocean waters lightly deposited sediment over the course of many years. This gradual deposition led to a thick, dense layer of blue clay that we can find now, in modern times. After the time of the oceanic Unity, came a time of frigid weather, these oceans froze over and resulted in what we know as the ice age. These frozen oceans became what we call glaciers. Although the glaciers are frozen water they still move, very slowly. As the glaciers moved they picked up enormous rocks and dragged them across the landscape carving out massive gouges in the land. Over the course of thousands of years the glaciers began to melt, as they did this there were massive sub-glacier rivers. These rivers carried all the rocks and sediment with them. As the years go by the glaciers would slowly disappear, although the glaciers would eventually be gone, the rocks and sediment that were deposited along the river would remain. Once the glaciers were gone the rocks and sediment that were deposited along the rivers were/are visible as huge ridges that can run miles along the country side. These huge ridges are what we now call eskers. Along the Sandy stream there is what appears to be a large, steep embankment on the Northern side of the stream; this embankment is actually the tail end of an esker.

-Kari Lemelin, Ethan Roderick, and Rebecca Zerlin