A Late-Pleistocene Glacial Sequence from Prince of Wales Island, Alaska

Abstract

Describes two tills exposed in the Maybeso Creek valley on the east coast of the island, differing in stratigraphic position and degree of weathering. The younger is blue-gray, compacted and weathered to 3 ft depth; the older is coarse, leached and with a particle of surface oxidation that suggests it is a remnant of the B horizon of a fossil till soil truncated by advance of the glacier that deposited the younger till. Such a twofold division of glacial deposits is found elsewhere in Southeast Alaska and may represent advances of the Wisconsin glaciation. Four recessional moraines of the younger till mark stillstands during the final retreat of the last glacier.