Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge. It lies on the border between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of New York. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Falls, which straddles the international border between the two countries and is also known as the Canadian Falls. The smaller American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls lie within the United States. For other uses, see Niagara Falls (disambiguation).

The falls are formed by the Niagara River, which carries water from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. Together, the falls have the highest flow rate of any waterfall in North America and are the seventh largest in the world. During peak daytime tourist hours, more than 168,000 cubic metres (5.9 million cubic feet) of water goes over the top of the falls every minute. Goat Island separates Bridal Veil Falls from Horseshoe Falls, and Luna Island separates Bridal Veil Falls from American Falls. Both islands are in New York. Horseshoe Falls is the most powerful waterfall in North America, measured by flow rate.

Niagara Falls is admired for its beauty and is a valuable source of hydroelectric power. It is a well-known honeymoon and vacation destination for Canadians and Americans, and it often appears in films and other media. Since the 19th century, the people who look after the falls have faced the challenge of balancing recreational, commercial, and industrial uses.

Niagara Falls is 27 kilometres (17 miles) northwest of Buffalo, New York, and 69 km (43 mi) southeast of Toronto. It sits between the twin cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario and Niagara Falls, New York. The falls were formed when glaciers retreated at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, which was the last ice age. Water from the newly formed Great Lakes then carved a path over and through the Niagara Escarpment on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.

Etymology

Experts have different ideas about where the name of the falls comes from. The most common idea is that it relates to Indigenous words for water. The Native American word Ongiara means thundering water, and The New York Times used it that way in 1925. Fredrika Bremer supports this early use, saying that Niagara is shortened from Oniaagarah or Ochniagarah, which First Nations Canadians knew as "the thunder of waters." Other ideas link the name to a place. George R. Stewart says it comes from an Iroquois town called Onguiaahra, meaning "point of land cut in two." In 1847, an Iroquois interpreter said the name came from Jaonniaka-re, meaning "noisy point or portage."

Other names for the area also help explain the word. To the Mohawks, the name means "the neck," pronounced "onyara," which refers to the land between lakes Erie and Ontario. The modern Seneca name, Jo'sgöhsodö', means "the cliffs are standing." Etymonline supports the idea that the word comes from Iroquoian and means "a neck," with written use from 1841. Philip D. Mason wrote that "Onguiaahra" appears on maps as early as 1641. Some scholars think the name is an ethnonym, taken from a group of people. Iroquoian scholar Bruce Trigger says it comes from a branch of the Neutral Confederacy, called the Niagagarega people on French maps from the late 1600s.

Characteristics

Horseshoe Falls, on the Canadian side, is the larger and taller of the falls and is often used in famous tourist pictures. It stands about 57 m (187 ft) high. The American Falls drops between 21 and 30 metres (69 and 98 feet) because of giant boulders at its base. Horseshoe Falls is about 790 m (2,592 ft) wide, and the American Falls is 320 m (1,050 ft) wide. The water flow peaks at 6,370 cubic metres per second (225,000 cubic feet per second), as recorded by Ontario Hydro. The flow depends on the water level of Lake Erie, so it usually peaks in late spring or early summer. In summer, about 90% of the water goes over Horseshoe Falls. The rest is sent to power stations and then to the American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls. A weir called the International Control Dam, with movable gates upstream from Horseshoe Falls, controls this.

The water flow is cut in half at night and during the quiet winter months, and it drops to a minimum of 1,400 cubic metres per second (49,000 cu ft/s). The Niagara River Treaty (1950) sets the rules for diverting water, and the International Niagara Board of Control manages them. The green color of the water comes from tiny bits of ground-up rock, called rock flour, that the Niagara River's flow creates. The Niagara River is an important bird area for Bonaparte's gulls, ring-billed gulls, and herring gulls. About 100,000 gulls spend the winter in the region, and between November and January, 20,000 to 30,000 can often be seen each day. The river and falls attract these birds because they lie on migration routes, offer food, and rarely freeze over.

Geology

The features that became the falls were created by the Wisconsin glaciation about 10,000 years ago. When the ice sheet retreated, it left behind a large amount of meltwater (see Lake Algonquin, Lake Chicago, Glacial Lake Iroquois, and Champlain Sea) that filled the basins the glaciers had carved, creating the Great Lakes as we know them today. Scientists think an old valley, St David's Buried Gorge, lies hidden under glacial drift, near where the Welland Canal is today.

When the ice melted, the upper Great Lakes emptied into the Niagara River, which followed the new landscape across the Niagara Escarpment. Over time, the river cut a gorge through the north-facing cliff, or cuesta. Because three rock layers were different, the riverbed did not erode evenly. The hard top layer is limestone and dolomite of the Lockport Formation (Middle Silurian), which eroded more slowly. Below it is the weaker, softer Rochester Formation (Lower Silurian), made mainly of shale with some thin limestone layers and ancient fossils. The river wore away the soft layer under the hard one, so the hard top broke off in big chunks, and this happened again and again, slowly carving out the falls. Hidden under the river is the Queenston Formation (Upper Ordovician), made of shales and fine sandstones. About 10,900 years ago, the falls were between present-day Queenston, Ontario, and Lewiston, New York, but erosion moved them about 10.9 kilometres (6.8 mi) south. Horseshoe Falls has changed shape from a small arch to a horseshoe bend to its present V-shape. Just upstream, Goat Island splits the river, separating Horseshoe Falls from the American and Bridal Veil Falls. Engineering has slowed erosion and recession. Erosion now happens at about 30 centimetres (12 inches) per year, down from a historical average of 1 to 1.5 m (3.3 to 4.9 ft) per year over at least the last 560 years. At this rate, the falls will erode the remaining 32 km (20 mi) to Lake Erie in about 50,000 years, and then cease to exist. In the 1870s, sightseers had limited access, and industry threatened Goat Island, so a conservation movement known as Free Niagara formed in the U.S., led by Hudson River School artist Frederic Edwin Church, landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, and architect Henry Hobson Richardson. Church approached Lord Dufferin, governor-general of Canada, about a public park. William Dorsheimer brought Olmsted to Buffalo in 1868. In 1883, New York Governor Grover Cleveland drafted legislation for a state reservation, and Charles Eliot Norton and Olmsted led the public campaign, while New York Governor Alonzo Cornell opposed it. On April 30, 1885, Governor David B. Hill signed legislation creating the Niagara Reservation State Park, New York's first state park. That same year, Ontario set up the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park, and the Niagara Parks Commission governs land use on the Canadian side. In 1887, Olmsted and Calvert Vaux issued plans to restore and conserve the falls' natural surroundings. In 1906, the Sierra Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and others persuaded the United States Congress to pass a law regulating the river's waters, and a 1909 treaty limited the water diverted from the falls. Erosion control has always been important. In 1969, a temporary dam diverted the river from American Falls, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers strengthened the riverbed. A plan to remove a large mound of talus was abandoned because of cost, and the temporary dam was later dynamited. Luna Island stayed closed to the public for years because it was thought to be unstable. In 2013, New York State began renovating Three Sisters Islands.

History

Explorer Samuel de Champlain heard about the falls from members of his party in 1604 and described them in his journals. Belgian missionary Father Louis Hennepin is credited with the first description of the falls in 1677, after travelling with René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. Earlier, French Jesuit missionary Paul Ragueneau likely saw the falls while working among the Huron First Nation, and Jean de Brébeuf may have visited while spending time with the Neutral Nation. The Finland-Swedish naturalist Pehr Kalm is credited with the first scientific description of the falls. In 1762, Captain Thomas Davies, a British Army officer and artist, painted An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara, the first eyewitness painting of the falls.

Tourism became popular in the 19th century and was the area's main industry by the mid-century. Theodosia Burr Alston, daughter of Vice President Aaron Burr, and her husband Joseph Alston were the first recorded couple to honeymoon there, in 1801. In 1843, Frederick Douglass visited the falls while touring with the American Anti-Slavery Society, and he wrote that "the power of description failed me." Because the falls were on the Canadian border, they were on one of the routes of the Underground Railroad, and much of that history is remembered at the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center. In about 1840, English chemist Hugh Lee Pattinson made the earliest known photograph of the falls, a daguerreotype held by Newcastle University.

Bridge crossings

Several bridges have crossed the Niagara River near the falls. The first, near the whirlpool, was a suspension bridge over the gorge. It opened to the public in July 1848 and was used until 1855. A second bridge near the Upper Falls opened in 1855 with two levels, one for the Great Western Railway. This Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge was used by conductors on the Underground Railroad to take runaway slaves to Canada. In 1882, the Grand Trunk Railway took control of the second level. Because of heavy traffic, a new arch bridge was built around the old one and opened in September 1897. The old suspension bridge was then removed. The new bridge was renamed the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge in 1937 and is still in use. In the Upper Niagara area, the first bridge opened in January 1869 and was destroyed in a severe storm in January 1889. Its replacement opened in May 1889. A steel bridge, later called the Honeymoon Bridge, opened in June 1897. An ice jam in January 1938 twisted its steel frame, and it collapsed on January 27, 1938.

In 1883, Cornelius Vanderbilt had a cantilever bridge built for railways about 60 metres (200 ft) south of the Railway Suspension Bridge. The Niagara Cantilever Bridge opened in December 1883. In 1923, the Michigan Central Railroad decided to build a new rail bridge, the Michigan Central Railway Bridge, which opened in February 1925 and was used into the early 21st century. The cantilever bridge was removed after the new one opened, but it was still honoured with a place in the North America Railway Hall of Fame in 2006. After a long dispute over who should build a replacement for the Upper Niagara arch bridge, construction of the Rainbow Bridge began in February 1940. This steel bridge has two lanes for traffic separated by a barrier, and it opened in November 1941.

Industry and commerce

See also: List of Niagara Falls hydroelectric generating plants

The huge energy of Niagara Falls has long been seen as a possible source of power. The first known effort to use the water was in 1750, when Daniel Joncaire built a small canal above the falls to power his sawmill. Later, the canal was enlarged to provide hydraulic power for a gristmill and tannery. In 1881, under the leadership of Jacob F. Schoellkopf, the Niagara River's first hydroelectric generating station was built. It produced direct current electricity that ran the machinery of local mills and lit some village streets. In 1890, a group of scientists led by Sir William Thomson could not choose a best plan for expanding the river's power. In 1893, Westinghouse Electric, which had built the smaller Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant near Ophir, Colorado two years earlier, was hired to design a system to make alternating current. A large-scale system was started on August 26, 1895. The Adams Power Plant Transformer House still stands as a landmark of that original system.

By 1896, money from J. P. Morgan, John Jacob Astor IV, and the Vanderbilts had paid for underground tunnels leading to turbines that made up to 75 megawatts (100,000 hp) of power. The Canadian government, the Government of Ontario, took over power transmission in 1906. In 1956, a landslide partly destroyed the region's largest hydropower station, which cut power production sharply. In 1957, Congress passed the Niagara Redevelopment Act, which let the New York Power Authority fully develop the United States' share of the river's power. Today, Niagara is still New York state's largest electricity producer, and water is sent through tunnels to the Robert Moses power plant. In August 2005, Ontario Power Generation, which runs the Sir Adam Beck stations, began the Niagara Tunnel Project to add a new water tunnel. It was opened in March 2013 and added 150 megawatts to the plant's nameplate capacity. It also provided hydroelectricity for about 160,000 homes. The Niagara River Treaty was signed on February 27, 1950 by Canada and the United States to protect the falls' beauty by limiting how much water the power plants could use. More water must flow over the falls during the day in the tourist season, and less at night and in the off-season. The treaty is monitored by the International Joint Commission, with help from a NOAA gauging station. The treaty was signed for Canada by Louis St. Laurent and for the United States by Stephen Woodward. Ships can avoid the falls through the Welland Canal, which became part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in the mid-1950s. The cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario, in Canada, and Niagara Falls, New York, are linked by two international bridges. The Niagara Falls International Airport and Buffalo Niagara International Airport were named after the waterfall, as were Niagara University and an asteroid.

Over the falls

See also: List of people who have gone over Niagara Falls

The first publicity stunt using the Falls was the wreck of the schooner Michigan in 1827. In October 1829, Sam Patch, who called himself "the Yankee Leapster," jumped from a high tower into the gorge below the falls and survived. This began a long tradition of daredevils trying to go over the falls. On October 24, 1901, 63-year-old Michigan school teacher Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to go over the falls in a barrel. She survived, bleeding but otherwise unharmed. Since then, over a dozen people have gone over the falls on purpose, and some were badly hurt. Going over the falls is now illegal on both sides of the border. Charles Stephens, a 58-year-old barber from Bristol, England, went over the falls in a wooden barrel in July 1920. Bobby Leach went over Horseshoe Falls in a steel barrel in 1911. In 1985, Canadian Karel Soucek from Hamilton, Ontario was badly hurt while trying to re-create the Niagara drop at the Houston Astrodome. In August 1985, Steve Trotter, an aspiring stuntman from Rhode Island, went over the falls in a barrel. In 1989, Peter DeBernardi and Jeffery James Petkovich became the first "team" to go over the falls in a two-person barrel. In 1993, John "David" Munday of Caistor Centre, Ontario completed his second journey over the falls. In 2003, Kirk Jones of Canton, Michigan became the first known person to survive a plunge over Horseshoe Falls without a flotation device, with only battered ribs, scrapes, and bruises. In 1960, the "Miracle at Niagara" happened when a seven-year-old boy was swept over Horseshoe Falls. He was rescued after grabbing a life ring thrown to him by the crew of the Maid of the Mist boat. Experts also noted that hypothermia can be a serious danger in the cold river.

Tightrope walkers drew huge crowds to watch their stunts. Their wires ran across the gorge near the current Rainbow Bridge, not over the waterfall. Jean François "Blondin" Gravelet was the first to cross Niagara Gorge on June 30, 1859. His final crossing, on September 8, 1860, was watched by the Prince of Wales. Maria Spelterini, a 23-year-old Italian, was the first and only woman to cross the Niagara River gorge on a tightrope, on July 8, 1876. Ontario's William Hunt, who called himself "The Great Farini," also competed in these stunts. On June 15, 2012, high wire artist Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk across the falls area in 116 years, after receiving special permission from both governments. Fish also go over the falls, and according to river expert Wes Hill, 90% of them survive.

Tourism

Niagara Falls welcomes over 20 million visitors each year, with summer being the busiest time. People visit during the day and in the evening. From the Canadian side, lights shine on both sides of the falls for several hours after dark.

The oldest and best-known attraction is the Maid of the Mist boat ride, which has taken passengers into the rapids below the falls since 1846. Boats leave from docks on both sides. The Maid of the Mist runs from the American side, and Hornblower Cruises (originally the Maid of the Mist until 2014) runs from the Canadian side. In 1996, Native American groups threatened to stop boat companies from playing what they called a fake story on their boats, and the Maid of the Mist dropped the audio.

From the American side, visitors can see American Falls from walkways in Prospect Point Park, which also has a viewing tower. Goat Island offers more views and can be reached by foot or by car over a bridge. Visitors can take an elevator to the Cave of the Winds and walk to a point beneath Bridal Veil Falls. The island also has a statue of Nikola Tesla, whose work on the AC induction motor and other AC power devices helped make it possible to use the falls for power. Most of these sights are in the Niagara Falls State Park.

The Niagara Scenic Trolley offers guided trips, and helicopter tours give views of the falls from above. The Niagara Gorge Discovery Center shows the natural and local history of the falls and the gorge. The Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel, opened by the Seneca Indian tribe, is the first new building to change the city's skyline since the United Office Building was finished in the 1920s.

On the Canadian side, Queen Victoria Park has gardens, viewing platforms, and underground walkways that lead to rooms where it seems as though you are inside the falling water. The Niagara River Recreational Trail runs 56 km (35 mi) from Fort Erie to Fort George and passes many historical sites from the War of 1812. The Skylon Tower has an observation deck with the highest view of the falls, and from it you can see as far as Toronto. The Whirlpool Aero Car, built in 1916 from a design by Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo, is a cable car that carries passengers over the Niagara Whirlpool. The Journey Behind the Falls has an observation platform and tunnels near the bottom of Horseshoe Falls. Two casinos are on the Canadian side: the Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino Niagara.

The New York Times describes helicopter tours over the falls, from both the American and Canadian sides, as still popular. Many rides are taken each day, and these flights have been offered since the early 1960s.

Media

Niagara Falls has long been a huge tourist attraction and a favorite spot for honeymooners. Visits rose sharply in 1953 after the movie Niagara, starring Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotten, was released. The falls have appeared in many other films, including the 1956 cartoon Niagara Fools, where Woody Woodpecker tries to go over the falls in a barrel, and the 1980 movie Superman II. In 1990, illusionist David Copperfield performed a trick in which he appeared to travel over Horseshoe Falls.

Many writers and composers have also been inspired by the falls. The area is the base camp for a German invasion of the United States in the H. G. Wells novel The War in the Air. Cuban poet José Maria Heredia wrote the poem "Niagara," and there are plaques on both sides of the falls that recognize it. In 1893, Mark Twain wrote a satirical sketch in which Adam and Eve are living at the falls. In 1960, composer Ferde Grofé wrote the Niagara Falls Suite to celebrate the first stage of hydroelectric work at the falls, and in 1997, composer Michael Daugherty wrote a piece for concert band inspired by the falls.

Fine art

Niagara Falls attracted landscape artists so much that, according to John Howat, they were "the most popular, the most often treated, and the tritest single item of subject matter to appear in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European and American landscape painting". Author Ginger Strand says that "Every time there was an advance in picture-making, folks raced to the Falls to try it out." She gives engravings, chromolithographs, photographs, panoramas, camera obscuras, early movies, Cinerama, and IMAX as examples of these new ways of making pictures.

Panoramic views

Niagara Falls, c. 1921

Rainbow bridge, the American, Bridal Veil, and Horseshoe Falls as seen from the Skylon Tower in 2016