10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT NIAGARA FALLS
There are few sights on earth to match Niagara Falls – the huge triple waterfalls that straddle the American and Canadian border. The Falls, where water from Lake Erie plunges over huge cliffs on its way to Lake Ontario, are the world’s most famous honeymoon spot, and the location of many foolhardy, daredevil stunts.
But what else should you know before you travel to Niagara? Today is the 168th anniversary of Niagara Falls Runs Dry Day! It’s only happened naturally once, in 1848, when freezing conditions upstream stopped the plunging waters for 30 hours!
1 – The Falls can be shut off by man
Back in 1848 it was extraordinary natural conditions (a log jam of ice at the Niagara River’s source) that gave locals a chance to walk the riverbed from Canada to America. And another drying out – or dewatering as they call it – could be on the way. The New York State Parks Department has plans to remove and replace some unsightly and unsafe bridges and are awaiting approval for a shut off of for up to seven months.
2 – Niagara is the oldest tourist attraction in North America
The Maid of the Mist boat tour started life as a straight forward ferry on the busy New York to Toronto route in 1846, but when a suspension bridge was built in 1848, the ferry lost passengers and was reborn as a sight-seeing tour, with a fancier boat. The Maids have been running ever since, and have welcomed many celebrities aboard, including the Prince of Wales in 1860. The Maid’s finest hour came on 9th July, 1960, when it helped rescue Roger Woodward, a seven-year-old boy who was the first to survive an unplanned fall over the Falls.
3 – The Falls will vanish one day
Historically, the Falls have been eroding by nearly a metre a year, but it’s currently down to just a foot a year. This incredible rate of attrition has already caused the falls to “walk” nearly seven miles along the river in the last 11,000 years. This is a Usain Bolt-like sprint in geological terms. This means that the Falls will have eroded themselves all the way to Lake Erie and out of existence in just 50,000 years.
4 – The Falls are worth a fortune in saved electricity charges
The resourceful US and Canadian authorities haven’t let the energy of the Falls’ 50m drop go to waste, and they produce hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of electricity each year. They’ve been trying to tap this natural power since 1759, when a sawmill ran above the Falls. The first electricity generator came in 1881, running local factories and street lights. The current American power station was built in 1961, the biggest hydroelectric generator in the world at the time and still the biggest producer of electricity in New York State.
5 – The man who walked across Niagara
Helicopter trips, ferries and suspension bridges over the Falls were of no interest to Charles Blondin, the great French tightrope walker who was the first to wire-walk across the gorge on 30th June, 1859. The rope on which Charles strolled was 1,100-feet long and just three inches in diameter, suspended about 50 metres above the waters. The stunt was Blondin’s own idea and turned him into an international phenomenon. He liked it so much that he came back a number of times, tackling the walk variously blindfolded, with a wheelbarrow, in a sack, on stilts, carrying his manager, and with a break to cook and eat an omelette along the way!
6 – The woman in the barrel
The first successful barrel drop over the Falls was in 1901, by a 63-year-old schoolteacher called Annie Edson Taylor – who took the precaution of chucking a cat over in her barrel first as a test. Annie survived (as did the cat) with a few cuts, but said “no-one ought ever to do that again” as they let her out. Not everyone listened, and 14 others have made the crazy journey, facing big fines if they survive.
7 – Visible from Toronto
The CN Tower in Toronto was the tallest free-standing structure in the world from 1976 to 2010. Among the many sites that can be seen from its observation pod – or the EdgeWalk for the really strong of stomach – is the mist rising from Niagara Falls, more than 40 miles away on the other side of Lake Ontario. Although the growth of downtown Toronto, a thriving city, is cutting off some of the view, the building of some big hotels on the Canadian side of the falls is increasing the amount and frequency of the Falls’ mists by pushing winds back into the gorge.
8 – Marilyn and the Falls
The Falls were already a long-established attraction and honeymoon spot by the 1950s, but the 1953 Marilyn Monroe film Niagara gave them a huge boost. Reviewers couldn’t help but compare the astounding natural setting with, “the grandeur that is Marilyn Monroe” and Andy Warhol used a still from the film for his famous multiple portrait of the actress, who was billed as a “raging torrent of emotion that even nature can’t control” on the film’s posters.
9 – The magician and the Falls
David Copperfield, the first modern TV superstar of magic, made an attempt to perform a super-human escape from a burning raft on the river above the Falls as part of a show in 1991. Copperfield had to get out of his predicament and reach a jet ski tied to the raft in around 60 seconds to avoid a very wet finale to his show. It appears as if David has failed, as the raft plunges over the edge, taking his hair gel with him into a watery grave. Happily, a helicopter soon rises up from below the Falls with the suspiciously well-groomed star dangling from a rope underneath it. The show won an Emmy for its camera wizardry.
10 – The mystery of the visitor numbers
Niagara Falls is undoubtedly and justly a hugely popular tourist attraction, but no-one’s exactly sure how many people rock up each year to catch a glimpse of some of the world’s most famous views. It’s possible to find numbers as high as 30 million quoted online (though with nothing to back them up), whilst the numbers for honeymooners are a bit firmer, because Niagara Falls city gives out certificates to newlyweds, and counts about 50,000 a year. After that it’s all a bit of a mystery. The New York State Office of Parks claim around 8 million, a number that local businesses dismiss, coming to their own total that’s around half that number.
However many people you’ll be joining, Niagara is one of the world’s must-sees, and its proximity to the fantastic cities of New York and Toronto make it an appealing stop off or centre point on both Atlantic and Caribbean cruises.
