Niagara Falls

Interesting facts

The only recorded time the falls ran almost dry was 29 March 1848, when an ice jam upstream cut the flow to a trickle for up to about 40 hours.

Before Annie Edson Taylor rode over Horseshoe Falls in 1901, her cat was sent over in the same barrel as a test, and it came out unharmed.

Under a 1950 treaty, at least 100,000 cubic feet of water per second must go over the falls during daylight in the tourist season, and only half that at night.

Between half and three-quarters of the Niagara River is diverted through tunnels to hydroelectric plants before it ever reaches the brink.

The green tint of the water comes from an estimated 60 tonnes of dissolved salts and finely ground rock flour swept over the falls every minute.

In 1859 the French tightrope walker Charles Blondin first crossed the Niagara Gorge on a wire, and later that summer carried his manager across on his back.

In 2012 Nik Wallenda walked a roughly 1,800-foot wire across the falls near the brink of Horseshoe Falls, the first such walk there in 116 years.

In 1960 seven-year-old Roger Woodward survived being swept over Horseshoe Falls and was pulled from the plunge pool by the crew of a Maid of the Mist boat.

The earliest known photograph of the falls is a daguerreotype taken around 1840 by the English chemist Hugh Lee Pattinson, with a tiny top-hatted figure that is probably him.

In 1885 New York created the Niagara Reservation around the American side, the first state park in New York, after a campaign led by Frederick Law Olmsted.

Why it is worth it

Niagara Falls hasn't stayed in one place. When the ice sheets retreated around 12,000 years ago and Lake Erie's outflow first cut through the Niagara Escarpment, the falls formed roughly 11 kilometres downstream from where they stand today, near what's now Lewiston and Queenston. The escarpment's caprock — hard Lockport dolomite sitting on much softer shale — erodes unevenly: the shale washes out from underneath, the dolomite ledge above loses its support and collapses, and the whole waterfall creeps upstream one collapse at a time. Do that for twelve millennia and you get an 11-kilometre gorge with the falls now sitting at its head.

That retreat used to happen fast — over a metre a year at points in the falls' history — which was actually a problem, since erosion that quick threatened to undercut the very cliffs tourism and hydropower depended on. The fix has been to throttle the river itself: since early hydroelectric development began diverting large volumes of the Niagara River's flow into power-station intakes (more at night and outside peak tourist season, less during the day in summer to keep the view impressive), engineers have deliberately cut the water actually going over the brink. Erosion has slowed to well under a third of a metre a year as a result — a natural wonder whose current pace is now set as much by utility scheduling as by geology.

Goat Island splits the flow into two falls with very different personalities: Horseshoe Falls curves and carries the bulk of the water, American Falls drops straighter and shallower over a jumble of rockfall debris at its base. That debris pile is itself part of the falls' history — engineers dewatered the American side completely in 1969 to study whether the rock behind it was stable, and stunts have run the other direction too, most famously Annie Edson Taylor going over Horseshoe Falls in a barrel in 1901 and, remarkably, walking away.

Best time to visit

Summer gives full flow and evening illumination and fireworks; winter builds spectacular ice along the banks and mist-freeze on nearby structures, though the falls themselves never fully freeze over.

Getting there

Located in Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls International Airport (IAG) is about 11 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

Niagara Falls is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning 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 of the two countries. It is also known as the Canadian Falls. The smaller American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls lie within the United States.

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