Lake Kankakee formed 14,000 years before present (YBP) in the valley of the Kankakee River. It developed from the outwash of the Michigan Lobe, Saginaw Lobe, and the Huron-Erie Lobe of the Wisconsin glaciation. These three ice sheets formed a basin across Northwestern Indiana. It was a time when the glaciers were receding, but had stopped for a thousand years in these locations. The lake drained about 13,000 YBP, until reaching the level of the Momence Ledge. The outcropping of limestone created an artificial base level, holding water throughout the upper basin, creating the Grand Kankakee Marsh. Lake Kankakee was a prehistoric lake during the Wisconsin glacial epoch of the Pleistocene Era. The lake formed during the period, when the Michigan and Saginaw lobes of the Laurentian glacier had receded back to the Valparaiso and Kalamazoo moraines. While the glacial advance became stagnant, the summer runoff formed a large lake covered parts of 13 counties in two states. Around 1840, Mr. F. H. Bradley applied the name Lake Kankakee to the lake which he thought formerly occupied the Kankakee basin. The sand deposits outside the marsh were the first clue that the lake existed. These sands were the result of Aeolian or wind processes, not lacustrine, or fluvial processes. He predicted that the lake would have been at an elevation of above sea level. Origin The glaciers were static, only in that the glacial fronts melted at a rate matching the southward push of the ice mass. The meltwaters from the eastern edge of the Michigan Lobe and the western edge of the Saginaw Lobe ran through the Dowagiac River valley of western Michigan. Joining the ancestral St. Joseph River, reversing the flow southward towards the flat plain till plain, where South Bend, Indiana now stands. From the east, the St. Joseph River valley drained the meltwaters from the southern edge of the Saginaw Lobe and the northwestern shoulder of the Huron-Erie Lobe. The Valparaiso Moraine formed the southern flank of the Michigan Lobe as well as the northern ridge of the Kankakee Valley. At the northern end of the valley, the Dowagiac River valley extended northward between the Valparaiso Moraine on the west and the Kalamazoo Moraine on the east. The Kalamazoo Moraine formed one side of the melting Saginaw Lobe, with the southern flank sitting on the Sturgis Moraine. South of the Sturgis Moraine, the future St. Joseph