Tuttle Hill is a drumlin, a streamlined north-south elongated hill that formed when glaciers covered the Amherst region. Other ice age features of the local landscape are described in the Geological Evidence for Glaciation exhibit at the Beneski Museum of Natural History.
Looking east from Tuttle Hill are the Pelham Hills with a skyline of flat-topped hill. Over the past 2.5 million years, these hills were eroded as glacial ice flowed south over them. The Rifts in Triassic and Early Jurassic at the Beneski Museum of Natural History recreates this view as it would have looked 190 million years ago.