Physically the town of Boston is very old. Scientists tell us that the shale rock, which underlies this area, was formed under the sea in the Devonian age, about 280,000,000 years ago. Later, the land was raised up so that before the glacial period, our hills were higher by possibly 1,800 feet than they are at present. When the great ice sheet came down from the north and overran Western New York, its great weight depressed the land and it has never come back to its preglacial elevation. Then too, the glacier planed off the top of the hills to a considerable extent.

Eighteen Mile Creek existed before the ice age but its valley was narrower than at present, and it flowed into a river which went southwest through wat is now Lake Erie, and into the Mississippi River.