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drainage basin and drained into the Gulf
of St. Lawrence to the northeast rather
than the Gulf of Mexico to the south.
The data indicate that the entire upper
Mississippi/Wisconsin River system
upstream of the modern confluence of the
Mississippi and Wisconsin River origi-
nally developed as an eastward-flowing
system. As has been documented for sev-
eral reaches of the modern Ohio River, we
propose that early and/or middle
Quaternary glaciations blocked the down-
stream portions of the St. Lawrence drain-
age basin, creating an ice-dammed lake in
the Wyalusing River valley. Stream piracy
at the location that is now the confluence
of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers
redirected an area of ~205,000 km2 to the
south as part of the greater Mississippi
River basin. The stream piracy event
caused a permanent reversal of flow along
the lower Wisconsin River valley, and
adjustment to the new base level drove
subsequent incision along the lower
Wisconsin and upper Mississippi Rivers
and their tributaries, which left only
the few remnant segments of the
Bridgeport strath that exist today. These
data and interpretations are consistent
with independent studies of Cenozoic
drainage evolution in the North American
mid-continent as determined by alluvial
sediment in the Gulf of Mexico (e.g.,
Galloway et al., 2011).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Initial conversations guiding the direction of this
research are indebted to James C. Knox (deceased).
The manuscript was significantly improved thanks
to the critical comments provided by three anony-
mous reviewers, as well as the comments provided
by C. Jennings and H. Loope on an earlier draft. GIS
support was provided by S. Mauel, P. Schoephoester,
and E. Ceperley. As a sounding board in the past and
future, ECC would like to thank MKR. This work
was partially funded by grants from STATEMAP
(G12AC20121 and G13AC00138) and the Great
Lakes Geologic Mapping Coalition (G12AC20388
and G13AC00296), and by the Wisconsin
Geological and Natural History Survey.
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