During the last ice age the glacier front of the Nordic
Inland ice, coming from the northeast, approximately as far as today's Rendsburg-Flensburg motorway. Dithmarschen remained ice-free.
Since a glacier releases large amounts of meltwater, especially in summer, wide streams of meltwater formed that led away from the glacier into the glacial valley of the Elbe. At that time, the world sea level was around 100 meters lower than it is today. One of these meltwater streams ran in what is now the lower Eider Valley and created a steep edge through erosion on the Dithmarscher Altmoräne. Due to earth flow caused by frost changes
However, in the final phase of the Ice Age this was flattened. The actual valley floor of the Ice Age meltwater valley is still around five meters below the current meadows cultivated from fens. Along the path, this striking slope is well preserved and is often interspersed with springs over impermeable clay layers, which are covered by a different type of vegetation such as
Sour grasses or alders are marked. The clay mined here was used in the late 19th and early 19th centuries
In the 20th century, yellow bricks were burned in up to three brickworks and shipped in large quantities across the Eider. (…from information board)