Exploring the Baraboo Syncline Region, Part DL-A: The Forested Johnstown Moraine in Fall | Devil's Lake State Park, Wisconsin, USA

Taken from near the southern end of the park's East Bluff. Facing southward.

 

A cliff-edge of lichen-encrusted Baraboo Quartzite and boughs of Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) frame the park's oak-hickory-maple forest in all of its polychromatic autumn glory.

 

This woodland community grows on the Johnstown Moraine, a broad and relatively subtle ridge of glacial till, lower than the bedrock South Bluff beyond it. The till was dumped at the margin of the Green Bay Lobe of the Wisconsin ice sheet late in the Pleistocene epoch. This morainal plug serves as a natural dam for the southern end of Devil's Lake, which previously was a river channel.

 

To see the other photos and descriptions in this series, visit my Exploring the Baraboo Syncline Region album.

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Uploaded on August 16, 2022
Taken on October 30, 2005