Two Creeks Buried Forest

State Natural Area (No. 50)

Location: Manitowoc County. T21N-R24E, Section 2, NE¼. 25 acres.

Access: From Two Creeks, go north on State Highway 42 2 miles to County Highway BB at the Kewaunee County line. Park in the lot immediately east of the intersection and south of the restaurant. Walk southeast into the natural area.

Description: Two Creeks Buried Forest provides a unique, precise record of the multiple glacial advances and retreats in this area during the Wisconsinan stage of glaciation. The historic forest became established between the Cary and Valders glacial substages. After temperatures warmed and the Cary glacier retreated northward, a mature boreal-like forest of black and white spruce, hemlock, pine, various mosses and other plants developed in the Two Creeks area near Lake Michigan. Shortly afterwards, the advancing Valders glacier blocked off the northern Lake Michigan drainageway, raising lake levels, flooding the forest and covering the ground with silt and clay, preventing decomposition. Later, when the southern end of the Valders glacier reached the area, it flattened the forest leaving behind another clay layer imbedded with logs and other debris. These layers of clay, silt, sand and the buried forest are visible on a steep bluff along the lakeshore where wave action and erosion have exposed the layers which contain long-buried branches, logs, and stumps of spruce, pine and hemlock trees. Conifer needles, cones, mosses, and terrestrial snails are also present within the layers. Unearthed wood, radiocarbon-dated at 11,850 before present, provides an absolute date on late-glacial sequences in the Lake Michigan Basin, and evidence that periods between substage glacial advances were long enough for forests to develop. Two Creeks Buried Forest is a unit of the Ice Age National Scientific Reserve and has been a popular study site for North American geologists, botanists, glacial ecologists and climatologists. Removal of any material is strictly prohibited. Two Creeks Buried Forest is owned by the DNR and was designated a State Natural Area in 1967.