Streams flowing over, under, and beyond the glacier also left deposits that vary our landscape. The conical hills of water-rounded sand and cobbles called kames, which stud parts of the Kettle Moraine, are deposits of streams that flowed downward through cracks in the ice. The sinuous eskers, such as the one near the Mondeaux Flowage Taylor County and the Pamell Esker in Sheboygan County, are ridges of rounded sand and gravel at the base of the glacier. Like drumlins, they are usually aligned parallel to the ice flow.

The flowing melt water spread fine layers of sand in broad plains, such as those in Langlade, Rock, and Portage Counties, which today are fertile cash crop farming areas. In several areas the melt water pooled, forming large lakes where silt and clay collected. The flat bed of glacial Lake Wisconsin, one of these lakes, is a marked contrast to the un-glaciated hills of the Driftless Area that bound its western side. In the Fox River Valley, Lake Winnebago and Horicon Marsh are small remnants of another pro-glacial Lake Oshkosh.

The torrents of melt water released from the wasting glacier or draining glacial lakes cut spectacular gorges in several areas of the state. Some, such as the Dalles of the St. Croix, the Wisconsin Dells, and the Dells of the Eau Claire, are still occupied by streams. Others, like the smaller gorge at the Cross Plains Ice Age Reserve Unit, are now dry save spring and storm runoff.

Although many of these features are outstanding by themselves, seen as a whole they form a glacial landscape of remarkable beauty. The thousands of drumlins, kames, and kettles and the numerous moraines, eskers, and other features left by the fluctuating lobes of the last Wisconsin glacier appear very similar to features being formed by today's active glaciers. The region of recent glaciation is dotted with over 14,000 glacial lakes; numerous bogs, marshes, and fens; and many streams whose courses are determined by the young glacial deposits. In a sense, this region of the state is still recovering from the melting of the last glacier. As the streams slowly wash away kames, eskers, and moraines, and as marshes, bogs, and lakes fill with sediment and organic debris, this young landscape will become like the older glacial landscape that lies between the Driftless Area and the terminal moraines of the most recent glaciation.