Tully Lake Sits on a Glacial Water Divide

Tully’s outdoors identity comes from a glacial lake system sitting on a divide. DEC describes Tully Lake as a shallow, weedy 234-acre lake near the Village of Tully, on the Cortland-Onondaga county line in the Towns of Preble and Tully. It is popular with ice anglers, and DEC notes that it freezes early compared with other area lakes.

USGS gives the deeper reason the area feels different from ordinary hill country. Its Tully Lakes study describes a three-square-mile area of kettlehole lakes and ponds within the Valley Heads Moraine. The list includes Green, Tully, Crooked, Song, Tracy, and Mud Lakes, plus several smaller ponds. The moraine forms the surface-water divide between the St. Lawrence and Susquehanna River basins.

That is a memorable local map for a small lake. Tully Lake has a hand launch off Friendly Shores Road and a 7.5-horsepower motor limit, but the bigger local texture is geological: kettleholes, weeds, ice, aquifer movement, and water deciding which big basin it belongs to.

Tully’s story is quiet, but it is not simple.