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c. 14,000–13,000 years ago
The township fed the lake meltwater across its surface; the lake's own waters ended southwest of South Bend. Glacial Lake Kankakee formed about 14,000 years ago from the outwash of all three lobes, covered more than 3,000 square miles at its extent, and drained about 13,000 years ago down to the Momence Ledge, the limestone shelf whose base level held the upper basin's water and thereby created the Grand Kankakee Marsh — 500,000 acres. The township question is answered from the record, not from inference: the record's own endpoint for the lake's northern waters is "the marshes southwest of South Bend", along the Kankakee main stem — the county's western township country. No source found in this section places Union Township, which lies south and southeast of South Bend, within the lake's waters. What the record places here is the till plain, and the meltwater route crossing it into the Kankakee valley. The supported statement, and the whole of it: Union Township stood beside and above the glacial lake's head, feeding it meltwater across its surface — not under the lake's named northern basin. No shoreline, beach-ridge or lacustrine-sediment mapping for the township was found in the sources reached, and none is claimed.