The setting of Mt. Hope Cemetery in the earliest Holocene as the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted back. The topography of western New York rises fairly constantly from the Ontario basin to Pennsylvania. Therefore, as the ice sheet melted a series of pro-glacial lakes formed in front of it.
Glacial ice is full of sediment.
The delta accumulated because the rate of melting only slightly exceed the rate of advance of the ice sheet and the ice withdrew very slowly. However the presence of a large chunk of ice in the delta suggests that immediately before this period of slow retreat there was an episode of rapid melting, during which the front of the ice sheet collapsed catastrophically. Large blocks of ice fell off the front of the ice sheet and became fully or partially buried in the soft silts and sands of the pro-glacial lake sediments. The modern setting of Mt. Hope Cemetery. After the final withdrawal of the ice sheet, the northside of the delta collapses without the ice to lean against.