UNEARTHING DENTON'S VLY: THE RISE AND FALL OF SARATOGA'S FORGOTTEN LAKE

On the campus of Skidmore College is a little-known wetland that marks the location of a drained lake known as Denton Vly. Our coring expedition, undertaken as a paleoclimatology class project, aims at understanding the climate and environmental history of Vly, Skidmore’s campus, and the broader region over the past few centuries.

The Vly’s history is complex and not well documented. Whether the Vly was a natural or manmade lake remains unclear; reports of the Vly’s age vary from pre-settlement in 1775 to the 1880s during development of the Woodlawn estate, a large resort complex on the property. We surveyed existing reports about the area's disturbance and land-use history, including fire history, particularly during the dry mid-20th century interval. Historical maps show the Vly’s maximum area was about 4 hectares, matching historical photographs, satellite imagery, and reports of recreational boating and swimming. If a natural lake existed here, the basin appears to reflect the local Gailor Dolostone bedrock lineament orientations, and would have been below the highstand of Glacial Lake Albany. The site has remained a wetland since it was drained in 1957, during adjacent railroad construction.

Today the steep-sided, tree-lined basin contains a flat, organic-rich sedimentary fill, covered by a dense stand of reeds reaching 14 feet tall, with a few scattered shrubs and trees. We took short test push-cores and scouted potential coring locations using a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). Using a Livingston-Bolivia coring device, we recovered a 1m long, organic-rich sediment core. Sediment depth remains unknown, as basal material has not yet been recovered.

Using binocular light microscopy at 10-400x, we found that the vast majority of the core is composed of plant material. The cores also contain rare micrometeorites, ostracod microfossils, insect fragments, mineral fragments, and grass pollen grains. We performed XRF analysis using a handheld scanner to characterize geochemical composition. Research is underway, and we aim to develop records of major and minor trace element concentrations in the core, and examine how these components have changed over time.