Niagara Stories

I periodically collect postings about similar subject matter into a compound posting. This is about both sides of Niagara Falls.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1) RAMESSES I

2) THE WALKWAY AND HIGHWAY OF NIAGARA

3) THE HANGING GARDENS OF NIAGARA

4) THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY

5) NABISCO SHREDDED WHEAT

6) THE OLD SCOW 

7) NIAGARA FALLS AND THE MOON LANDINGS

8) THE PROTO CANALS OF NIAGARA

9) THE AMAZING DONUT SHOP

10) THE ELECTRIC TRANSMISSION TOWERS 

11) NIAGARA NATURAL HISTORY SUMMARY

12) GLACIAL EFFECTS 

1) RAMESSES I

In an amazing story, the mummy of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses I spent over a century in a museum just north of the Canadian end of the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls, but without anyone knowing who he was.

On a number of occasions, I visited this museum. It used to be called simply the Niagara Falls Museum, but is no longer there:

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/97912

One of the first exhibits that one saw in the museum was a mummy from Egypt, but no identification as to who it was. It was later determined who the mummy was, and it turns out that we were in the presence of royalty. The mummy has since been given back to Egypt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_I#/media/File:StatueHeadOfParamessu-TitledFrontalView-RamessesI_MuseumOfFineArtsBoston.png

Ramesses I was not born into royalty. Pharaoh Horemheb was childless and so chose Ramesses I as his successor. This began the Nineteenth Dynasty, in which Egypt would become increasingly powerful. A new rival was emerging, the Hittites, and after some battles the two would undertake what is believed to be the world's first peace treaty. Ramesses I ruled around 1290 BC. He was old when he took power, and his reign is believed to have been less then two years. He probably died suddenly because his tomb shows signs of having been unfinished.

Ramesses I ruled in what is called the New Kingdom. The history of Ancient Egypt is divided into the Old, Middle and, New Kingdoms, with Intermediate Periods in between. The kingdoms were long periods of stability, the Intermediate Periods in between were times of less stability. The New Kingdom began with the removal of invaders, known as Hyksos, from Egypt.

Ramesses I was followed as pharaoh by his son, Seti, and then his very famous grandson, Ramesses II, who was one of the greatest of pharaohs. None of these pharaohs was buried in a pyramid. By the time of Ramesses I, the heyday of the pyramids was over a thousand years in the past. It was the Old Kingdom which produced the three pyramids of Giza.

Pharaohs at the time of Ramesses I were buried in much simpler, and less-expensive, tombs in what is known as the Valley of the Kings. King Tut, who seems to have died as a teenager and who is well-known only because ancient grave robbers never found his tomb, was also buried in the Valley of the Kings.

By the way, the Bible story of the Hebrews being at first welcomed, but later made into slaves in Egypt, fits well with what we now know of it's history. The unnamed pharaoh who welcomed and promoted Joseph could have been one of the Hyksos rulers, who had, like the Hebrews, originated from Canaan. But then a pharaoh arose who knew nothing about Joseph, and made the Hebrew settlers, who had been favored by the Hyksos rulers, into slaves. This took place after the Egyptians had rebelled against Hyksos rule, and drove them out, and were naturally wary of these other settlers from the east, who the Hyksos had allowed in.

Ramesses I, like other pharaohs around this time, contributed to building of the temple complex of Karnak, located in the modern city of Luxor. This is in the south of Egypt, far from the Pyramids of Giza. Image from Google Street View.

2) THE WALKWAY AND HIGHWAY OF NIAGARA

The highway between Niagara Falls, Canada, and Toronto is called the Queen Elizabeth Way, abbreviated QEW. But it was named for the mother of Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen Mother who was also named Elizabeth, and was there before Elizabeth II became Queen. The future Queen Elizabeth II visited Niagara Falls in 1951.

The Canadian side of Niagara Falls has been the scene of some dramatic stories. During our visit, we will have a look at two of those stories. I am writing this posting because I think that there is a feature of the city, a short walkway, that should be remembered as a part of the city's history, and both of the stories to which I am referring converge on that walkway.

The centerpiece of the city is Queen Victoria Park, along the waterfront of the falls. As the name implies, it was founded to honor Queen Victoria, and opened on her birthday in 1888. There is a statue of King George VI in the park, who visited in the 1930s and was the great-grandson of Queen Victoria, as well as the father of Queen Elizabeth II. Image from Google Street View.

In the northern section of what is now Queen Victoria Park, toward Clifton Hill, a wealthy man named Samuel Zimmerman once planned to build an estate. But he was killed in an accident before the estate was completed, and all that remains today is the fountain. That is why there is one fountain in the park.

One of the dramatic stories of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls is that of Sir Harry Oakes. He was American by birth, from Maine. While attending college he became fascinated with the idea of searching for gold. He cut his education short to participate in the Klondike Gold Rush, in northern Canada toward the end of the Nineteenth Century.

Not finding wealth, he continued looking for gold in various places around the world, until finally striking a rich gold mine in northern Ontario. He became extremely wealthy and, as fortune would have it, settled in Niagara Falls. He later became a British citizen.

The name of Oakes is everywhere on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls today. I used to live near Oakes Park. One of the hotels towering over the falls is the Oakes Hotel.

There was a hotel just north of the end of Queen Victoria Park on the other side of Clifton Hill, which is the best-known street in the tourist district. It was known as the Clifton Hotel, and replaced another hotel named Clifton that had been destroyed by fire in 1898. The second Clifton Hotel was also destroyed by fire, this time in 1932. This is the second Clifton Hotel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifton_Hotel_(Canada)#/media/File:Clifton_5333431278_7fc9cfb6c9_o.jpg

The original Clifton Hotel, the one destroyed in 1898, had a role in the U.S. Civil War. Britain, still ruling Canada at the time, declined to get involved in the war but did allow Confederate agents to set up shop in the hotel. They apparently plotted to sabotage industrial targets on the U.S. side, just across the river, although I don't think anything ever became of their plans.

After the destruction of the second Clifton Hotel, in 1932, Sir Harry Oakes bought the property and then donated it so that a garden could be constructed there. The result is the magnificent Oakes Gardens that we have today. It is a northern extension of Queen Victoria Park and I consider this as the real centerpiece of the city. Image from Google Earth.

Take a look, in the photo, of all of the stone around the foundation of the Clifton Hotel. That is the stone that was reused as the walls around, and stairs into, Oakes Gardens.

Anyway, to finish the story of Sir Harry Oakes, he eventually got tired of taxes and moved to the Bahamas, where taxes were practically non-existent. He gave his mansion to be the headquarters of the Niagara Parks Commission. The Bahamas greatly benefited from his wealth, and he owned much of the island on which Nassau is located.

Image from Google Earth
 
One day, he was found murdered in his home. It was known that he didn't get along with his son-in-law, and the two had been seen arguing. The son-in-law was suspected in the murder, but it was never proven.

A reason that the Oakes Gardens were constructed was to enhance the Canadian end of the Honeymoon Bridge. An arch, the Clifton Memorial Arch, was also built as an entrance way to Queen Victoria Park from the bridge, which would mean turning south from the Canadian end. But that brings us to the second of our dramatic stories, the collapse of the Honeymoon Bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeymoon_Bridge_(Ontario)#/media/File:Honeymoon_Bridge,_Niagara_Falls_(1900).jpg

This was actually the first time that a plane had flown under a bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeymoon_Bridge_(Ontario)#/media/File:Curtiss_Model_D._flies_under_Honeymoon_Bridge,_Niagara_River_(circa_1911).jpg

The trouble with the Honeymoon Bridge is that it's abutments were too close to the river's edge. This was a danger to the bridge if a large volume of ice should come over the falls. This was long before the Ice Boom was put in place, at the entrance to the Niagara River from Lake Erie. In 1938, the bridge was simply torn from it's foundations by the massive amount of ice that came through the river.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeymoon_Bridge_(Ontario)#/media/File:Honeymoon_Bridge_Collapse_Niagara_Falls_Jan_1938.jpg

The successor to the Honeymoon Bridge is the present Rainbow Bridge, where the abutments were prudently placed higher above the river.

The Rainbow Bridge is somewhat downstream from where the Honeymoon Bridge was located. Thus, the Oakes Gardens and Clifton Memorial Arch were no longer directly at the Canadian end of the bridge. It was decided that the arch was a hindrance to traffic, and it was eventually removed. Ironically the last summer that the Clifton Memorial Arch stood, that of 1967, was the centennial of Canadian independence.

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/248819

A medallion that was on the Clifton Memorial Arch, featuring a ship, is now mounted on the sidewalk at the intersection of Front and Jarvis Streets in Toronto, diagonally across from the St. Lawrence Market, as shown in these two images from Google Street View. 

One thing that I have not seen written about Niagara is that the walkway just north of Oakes Gardens, and running between Falls Avenue and the Niagara Parkway, is built on what was the street by which traffic entered Canada from the Honeymoon Bridge. Both of the stories that we have seen, that of Sir Harry Oakes, and that of the collapse of the Honeymoon Bridge, brings us to this short walkway that I think is part of the city's history.

Here is an old photo, but taken after the street was made into this walkway. The walkway, with the short flight of stairs, is at the far right of the photo. To the left is the stairs into Oakes Gardens. Remember that the stonework in Oakes Gardens is the stone salvaged from the destroyed Clifton Hotel. Again, the Oneida Silver building in the background is where the casino is now located.

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/97278

Here is a view along the walkway from Google Earth. 

Queen Elizabeth II visited Oakes Gardens, but before she became queen. The future queen arrived in Niagara Falls at the same train station, on Bridge Street, that I would arrive in the area at 14 years later, as described in the posting on this blog, "Remembering The Old Neighbourhood", April 2015. When the soon-to-be queen looked at the falls, there was reported to be an exceptionally vivid double rainbow that appeared, that even some Americans took as a sign that they should come back under the rule of the queen.

The nearby highway the Queen Elizabeth Way, or QEW, was not named for Elizabeth II. It was there before her reign. Her mother was also known as Queen Elizabeth, she was the wife of King George VI, whose statue is in the park. After the ascension of Queen Elizabeth II, she became known as the Queen Mother. The QEW was named for her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_Way#/media/File:Ontario_QEW.svg

The recent queen is Elizabeth II. We saw the first Queen Elizabeth in the posting on this blog, "Why The U.S. And Canada Are Different".

Does anyone remember the monument that used to be at the Toronto end of the QEW? It is still in a nearby park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_Way#/media/File:Entrance_to_the_Queen_Elizabeth_Way.jpg

Finally, there was another monument that was dedicated during the visit of King George VI to the area. Drivers on the QEW, between the Niagara area and Toronto, go past what is known as the Henley Bridge Monument, in St. Catharines. These are two matching monuments, on opposite ends of the bridge, that forms lions on a boat. Each of the lions is holding a motto.

Here are some scenes of the Henley Bridge Monument, and surrounding area of St. Catharines. Harriet Tubman used to own a home in St. Catharines. This monument is not far from the spot where Tim Horton was killed in a crash. He was a hockey player who was trying to evade the police, who suspected that he had been drinking and driving. There was donut shops, but he surely could never have imagined what would become of his name. Images from Google Street View.

 

This is the walkway, formerly the street on the Canadian side from the Honeymoon Bridge, to which I am referring. The view is from Falls Avenue, just north of Oakes Gardens and looking east toward the American side. Image from Google Street View.

3) THE HANGING GARDENS OF NIAGARA

I believe that Oakes Garden Theatre, a prominent feature of the tourist area of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, was inspired by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

On the Canadian side of Niagara Falls are what is known as the Oakes Garden Theatre. It is centrally located in the tourist district, at the bottom of Clifton Hill. It is situated as a northward extension of Queen Victoria Park, and many millions of people must have walked around it while visiting Niagara.

There was once a well-known hotel, right by the Canadian end of the Honeymoon Bridge which collapsed in 1938 after being torn off it's foundation by ice in the river. The hotel, the Clifton House, was destroyed by fire on New Year's Eve, 1932. An earlier hotel on the site had also been destroyed by fire, 34 years before.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifton_Hotel_(Canada)#/media/File:Clifton_5333431278_7fc9cfb6c9_o.jpg

After the destruction of the hotel, it was decided to build a public garden on the site. Some of the stonework salvaged from the hotel was used in construction of the garden. The land had been purchased by Sir Harry Oakes, who stated the condition that access to the garden must be free for the public.

The conquests of Napoleon had brought ancient Egypt into the public consciousness of the west. By the late Nineteenth Century extensive archeological explorations were going on across the Middle East. The great empires described in the Bible, Assyria, Babylon and, Persia, as well as Egypt, were brought to light.

By the 1930s the archeological excavations of the ancient Middle East had really caught the public imagination of the west. The entire great city of Ur was uncovered. The magnificent tomb of King Tutankhamun (Tut), with all of it's solid gold artifacts, had been found. King Tut had not been an important pharaoh of ancient Egypt, having died as a teenager. What made him so well known is that grave robbers in ancient times had failed to find, and loot, his tomb.

Later in ancient times during the Hellenistic Era, the few centuries before the birth of Christ, a list was made of seven magnificent places to visit. The list later came to be known as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The only one that still exists today are the pyramids of Egypt.

One of the seven ancient wonders was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar II, the same one whose forces destroyed Solomon's Temple and took the Jews into captivity, supposedly had a queen from Media. In the flat expanse of Babylon she missed the green valleys of her homeland.

So Nebuchadnezzar had a multi-level garden built for her. It was so splendid that it became world-renowned as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

But modern archeological explorations of Babylon found no evidence at all of any such gardens. A lot of doubt arose as to whether there had ever been the Hanging Gardens. Maybe it could have been the invention of later writers.

Inscriptions of a multi-level garden actually were found but in the ruins of Nineveh, which had been the capital city of Assyria, and not in Babylon. A credible theory arose that the Hanging Gardens really had existed but writers in the Hellenistic Era, several centuries later, had mistakenly placed them in Babylon, instead of Nineveh, or had confused the cities of Nineveh and Babylon.

By the Hellenistic Era Nineveh had long since been destroyed, and it seems unlikely that the gardens would still exist at that time. But their fame could have carried enough to get it listed among the Seven Wonders.

Whether or not the Hanging Gardens of Babylon ever actually existed, they caught the public imagination. The following fanciful image, believed to have been made in the late Nineteenth Century, was the public view of the gardens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon#/media/File:Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon.jpg 

Oakes Garden Theatre was built in the 1930s, just when the fascination with ancient history was near it's peak. What I have concluded is that the above illustration of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was a primary influence in the design of the Oakes Garden Theatre. It is built on a slope, the bottom of Clifton Hill, although it's slope is nowhere near as steep as the one that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is built on in the illustration.

Here is a look at Oakes Garden Theatre.

https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=oakes+garden+theatre&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiX8_2E06PtAhVFTTABHeiKCQ0Q7Al6BAgDEDg&biw=1600&bih=789 

Here is another look at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The link to ancient history is bolstered by the mummy of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses I, in a nearby museum. At the time the identity of the mummy was not known. When it was determined that the mummy was indeed that of Ramesses I it was returned to Egypt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon#/media/File:Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon.jpg 

4) THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY

There is a story revolving around Niagara Falls that I believe everyone should know. It is the one Niagara story that tends to get forgotten.

The falling water of Niagara was capable of generating a lot of power, both mechanical and hydroelectric. The availability of inexpensive electricity attracted many industries to both sides of the border. The Canadian side became especially known for silver production. The northernmost part of Niagara Falls, Canada, is still known as "Silvertown", because so many workers in the silver industry lived there.

Meanwhile, in the central area of New York State, a unique community arose in the Nineteenth Century. It was called the Oneida Community. 

Nothing like the Oneida Community had ever been seen before. It was a commune, with several hundred people living together and sharing possessions equally. The community supported itself with a variety of industries, including the production of silver utensils.

The members of the Oneida Community were about equally divided between men and women. The thing that was so unique, and scandalous at the time, was that every man in the community was considered to be married to every woman, and vice-versa.

Individual males and females were discouraged from developing feelings for each other. It was, after all, a communal way of life. Some males and females were specially selected to breed children.

The Oneida Community believed that they were already in the Millennium foretold in the Bible, and that their way of life was part of it.

The founder of the community, John Humphrey Noyes, found out that he was to be arrested. He escaped across the border to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, where the community had a factory.

I can remember from childhood the Oneida Silver company. It was a prominent and attractive building right by the falls. It is the building in the background of the following photo.

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/97278

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/100740

In the 1960s, international tourism was greatly increased by the availability of inexpensive travel. The movie that launched the career of Marilyn Monroe was filmed in Niagara Falls. A tall observation tower, from which visitors could view the falls, was constructed on the moraine immediately above the Horseshoe Falls, the Seagram Tower named for the drink company.

The Oneida Company, now a major producer of silverware, decided to build it's own observation tower, next to it's factory at the opposite end of the falls area from the Seagram Tower.

This is the tower, with the Oneida Silver building behind.

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/89451

The Oneida Tower was close to the famous tourist district of Clifton Hill. It was at the Canadian end of the Rainbow Bridge and next door to the hotel, then called the Sheraton Brock, where Marilyn Monroe famously stayed while "Niagara" was being filmed. 

The Skylon Tower, the tallest of the three, would later be built about halfway between the Seagram and Oneida Towers, right above Queen Victoria Park.

The Oneida Company is long gone, but the tower remains. The site of the Oneida silverware factory is now the casino. The tower that was built by Oneida is now considered as unsafe and is closed. It hosts a sign for the casino, and is known as the Casino Tower.

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/99476

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Tower#/media/File:Casino_Tower,_Hard_Rock_Cafe.jpg

5) NABISCO SHREDDED WHEAT

There was a lot of hydroelectric potential at Niagara Falls and the availability of inexpensive electricity attracted industries that required a lot of electricity. This was before the widespread use of alternating current, instead of direct current, on which transformers can step up the voltage to make long-distance transmission much more efficient, so that it is not particularly advantageous for the industries to be close to the source of power.

An inventor named Henry Perky got the idea that shredding wheat, and then weaving it into a small loaf, would be a healthy breakfast food that would require minimal preparation. He patented a wheat-shredding machine, that he intended to sell, but ended up selling the shredded wheat itself.

Since the wheat-shredding machines ran on electricity, it would be cost-effective to have the factory at Niagara Falls. Before the opening of the Welland Canal, nearby Buffalo's Lake Erie waterfront was as far east as ships could go on the Great Lakes. There was an abundant supply of wheat as ships brought it from America's Midwest to the wheat silos in Buffalo.

A magnificent factory was built, just above the falls with a view of the Niagara River. It had abundant windows and was known as the "Light Palace". It opened in 1901 as the Natural Food Company.

The company was revolutionary, at the time, for how well employees were treated. There was an auditorium, a library, free classes, and outdoor sports facilities for workers.

The factory was near the falls and taking a tour of it became part of visiting Niagara Falls. Not only did the company pioneer the concept of breakfast cereals, so many people toured the modern facility that it must have had a considerable influence on industry. It's shredded wheat was featured at the 1901 Pan American Exhibition in Buffalo.

Another factory was opened, on the Ontario side right by the Clifton Hill tourist district. In 1928 the company was sold to Nabisco. The name of Nabisco is a contraction of "National Biscuit Company".

Nabisco eventually built a new factory nearby, the building with the wheat silos that is still standing although it has long been closed. The original factory building, the "Light Palace", was sold.

The building was demolished, with the exception of the administration part of the building. In the following image of the factory building, the administration section is the front part of the building that extends forward. This part was left intact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shredded_wheat#/media/File:Shredded_wheat_factory_newspaper_ad.png

In 1963 the first of the Baby Boom generation was entering their final year of high school. The following year there would be more high school graduates than ever before, and many would be seeking higher education.

The advent of the Baby Boomers brought about the concept of the community college, or technical college, where admission standards and tuitions were not high, study could be part-time or full-time, two-year degrees and one-year certifications were offered, and students could attend college while deciding what they really wanted to do.

The administration section of the old factory building, the forward part that had not been demolished, became the new Niagara County Community College. Facilities, such as the library for the factory employees, were put to new use. The space where the rest of the building had been became parking lots.

When I was a boy, living on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, my father got a job on the U.S. side and we would be moving over. We were driving around on the U.S. side downtown one day and there were some college-age people outside a building. My father said, "There's a college. Maybe you will go there some day".

The number of students caused the college to soon outgrow the building. In 1970 construction was started on an expansive new campus in a rural area of Niagara County. Classes began there for the spring semester of 1973.

Preservationists tried unsuccessfully to save the old building. It was demolished but nothing has since been built on the site.

Today this driveway, on 6th Street just off Buffalo Avenue, is all that remains of the former Niagara County Community College ( NCCC or N-trip ) from 1963 to 1972. Image from Google Street View.

NCCC is actually important to this blog because that is where my religion started. I was taking a psychology class, as an elective, and was in the library looking for some book. I noticed a book called "The Amazing Results Of Positive Thinking" by Norman Vincent Peale. I wanted to be able to lift more weight and thought that the first step was to really believe that I could. 

But the book contained a lot of religion. It left my nineteen-year-old head spinning. I realized that there was a whole other dimension to life, that I had not been paying much attention to. Life has never been quite the same since. 

6) THE OLD SCOW 

The Old Scow Of Niagara is the remains of a barge that lies in the river, not far above the brink of the falls near the Canadian side of the river. It has long been a tourist attraction in itself.

In 1918 two men were working in the barge, on the American side of the river, when it broke loose from it's mooring and was swept toward the falls by the current. The two managed to open the bottom of the barge so that it flooded. This saved them from going over the falls but they were still stuck out in the river.

In the days before helicopters a line was fired out to the barge but it became tangled. The hero of the day was the Canadian daredevil and all-around riverman, William "Red" Hill". He crawled out and untangled the line, and both men were rescued.

The scow remained where it was, easily visible from the Canadian shore, and millions of people saw it over the years. I first saw it after we landed in Canada when I was a young boy.

In 2019, after the scow had been there for 101 years, it's position shifted downstream due to the force of high winds. Now the news is that the scow has broken into pieces.

In the following image from Google Street View it is seen at the far left, before it broke into pieces.

7) NIAGARA FALLS AND THE MOON LANDINGS 

In 1969 the American Falls, which are one of the two main falls at Niagara, were shut off by the construction of a temporary dam. This was possible because actually less than ten percent of the water flows over the American Falls because it's base is higher in elevation than that of the Horseshoe Falls. The purpose was announced as the testing of the rock strata to possibly prevent erosion of the cliff over which the water falls. There had been major rock falls the decade before, leaving a large amount of rock at the base of the falls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Falls#/media/File:American_Falls_Niagara_Falls_USA_from_Skylon_Tower_on_2002-05-28_crop.png

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/90264

There are numerous photos and videos of the nearly dry falls online. Just do a search for "Dry Niagara Falls 1969" or "dewatered Niagara Falls 1969" if you want to see more.

Remaining traces of the dam between Goat Island and the mainland, can be seen in the satellite imagery from Google Earth as it disturbs the water rushing over it toward the falls. It took well over a thousand truckloads of rock and soil, dumped into the river, to build the dam.

This put Niagara Falls in the news across the world. It was my first summer in America and the area around the falls were very crowded with people wanting to see the dry riverbed and the falls up close. Many people came from the Toronto area to see it.

The Canadian side usually has the natural advantage in viewing the falls because most of the falls can be seen directly from there. The spectacle of turning off the falls made viewing from the U.S. side more popular, but harmed the tourist season overall because there was not much to be seen from the Canadian side but the bare wall of the gorge.

But why couldn't this have been done in the off-season? There was enough time between the end of the tourist season and the beginning of winter to accomplish whatever had to be done. Why tamper with the falls at all? The erosion of the base of the falls is part of the natural process, and the falls has worked it's way from it's beginning at the Niagara Escarpment at Lewiston-Queenston, at the end of the last ice age, to where it is now, by the natural process of the rushing water eroding the cliff face.

The geologists drilled holes in the riverbed, and tested the permeability of the rock layers with dye. After all of the testing was done, the decision was made that the best thing to do was to just leave the falls alone.

That is because, despite the announced purpose, this was never about the falls to begin with.

This was in no way a local idea, it originated with the U.S. Congress. The plan to shut off Niagara Falls was organized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the dam was built by a local construction company.

The shutting off of Niagara Falls in 1969 was actually an international power play by the new Richard Nixon administration. The falls were just the stage on which this play was acted out. The dam was built in the days leading up to the first attempt to land astronauts on the moon, Apollo 11. The dry riverbed was a terrestrial reflection of the surface of the moon, in this era of Cold War posturing and propaganda, for all of the tourists who came to Niagara to see what America could do.

Shortly after humans had walked on the hitherto inaccessible surface of the moon for the first time, a ladder down to a walkway was constructed so that visitors could walk on the hitherto inaccessible riverbed for the first time. They naturally waited to make sure that the moon mission would be a success first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11#/media/File:Apollo_11_first_step.jpg

Just as tourists being able to walk on the dry riverbed of Niagara evoked the astronauts walking on the moon a few days before, the geologists examining the rock of the riverbed evoked the astronauts examining the rocks of the moon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11#/media/File:Aldrin_with_experiment.jpg

Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969,. In November of that year, astronauts landed on the moon again, in Apollo 12. This mission was also a great success. One surprise about the moon was the variation in it's surface gravity from one place to another. Because of this, Apollo 11 actually missed it's intended landing site by several km.

This was corrected in Apollo 12. More than two years before a robot spacecraft had been landed on the moon, Surveyor 3. In an amazing feat of precision, Apollo 12 landed right next to Surveyor, removed it's camera, and brought it back to earth. The following photo is of one of the astronauts at the Surveyor craft, with their lunar module in the background.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_12#/media/File:Surveyor_3-Apollo_12.jpg

This was also reflected at Niagara Falls. Just as humans had their first opportunity to walk on the riverbed of Niagara just after America's astronauts had first walked on the moon, the water of Niagara was turned back on by the removal of the dam immediately after the ensuing Apollo 12 had returned from it's successful mission by splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

The shutting off of the falls lasted from the time of Apollo 11 to the time of Apollo 12. The turning back on of the falls was also a major news event. Not only could we land men on the moon, and get them safely back, we could also turn the falls off and back on again.

Despite the expense of the project, nothing was done to change anything about the falls. That is because it was never about the falls in the first place. I think that this history makes Niagara Falls, NY more interesting.

What actually happened is that Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was incessantly critical of the conduct of America's Vietnam War. He even came to Niagara Falls to personally welcome American draft dodgers to refuge in Canada. The new U.S. administration of Richard Nixon didn't appreciate the criticism.

The announced purpose of turning off the falls was for examination of the underlying rock strata. But it had a devastating effect on the Canadian Niagara tourist season. Instead, it brought tourists to the American side to see the dry falls up close. 

This was around the same time that the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Sweden over it's criticism of the Vietnam War. 

But Nixon and Trudeau soon patched things up. In 1972, Richard Nixon visited Pierre Trudeau in Ottawa and famously predicted that Trudeau's then-infant son would someday be Canadian Prime Minister. 

8) THE PROTO CANALS OF NIAGARA

This posting is about two changes in plans about the location of the Canadian hydraulic canal, which was the original source of water from the upper Niagara River to generate hydroelectricity at the Sir Adam Beck power plants. These two changes in plan have shaped the landscape of the city that we see today.

THE NIAGARA POWER PLANT THAT NEVER WAS

My finding is that some of the northern half of the city of Niagara Falls, Canada has been shaped by changes in plans of where to build the hydraulic power canal which supplied water to the electric power generating plants to the north of the city. The power canal was the original source of water for the Sir Adam Beck Plant to generate power, it was later supplemented by two water tunnels running under the city, and recently a third tunnel was completed. Unlike the Canadian side of Niagara, the U.S. side has no open power canal as the water to it's generating plant flows only through a massive tunnel.

In 1917, work began on the hydraulic canal that would bring water from the level of the upper Niagara River, above the falls, so that it could fall to the level of the lower river, and in doing so would turn the turbines that would generate electricity. The Welland River, which runs through Chippawa, would have it's flow reversed so that it would bring water in from the larger Niagara River, which would then flow through the power canal, around the city to the power plant to the north.

My conclusion, that I can find no documentation of, is that there must have been two changes in plans after the decision to begin the canal had been made. This explains what we see in the Canadian side of Niagara Falls today.

Here is the power canal. Keep in mind that this is not the same thing as the Welland Canal, even though both canals run north-south. The Hydraulic Canal is much narrower than the Welland Canal and is not navigable, it only brings water to the power plants to generate electricity. Image from Google Earth.

Here is the final destination of the water in the canal. On the right side of the lower river is the Sir Adam Beck generating plants. There are actually two separate plants now. Image from Google Earth.

Before these large modern generating plants, there were smaller ones. There was one on the U.S. side, the Adams generating plant, which has great historical value because it established alternating current, rather than direct current, as being the best choice for electrical distribution. The reason being that transformers work on alternating current, but not direct current.

There are three small power plants on the Canadian side, near the falls. All have long since been decommissioned, as the two countries have an agreement that each will only take a certain amount of water from the upper river for power generation. One of these plants is down in the gorge, just below the falls.

There was another plant in the gorge, on the U.S. side, which collapsed into the river in 1956. This was the Schoellkopf plant. Many industries had earlier used wheel pits, which took water from a hydraulic canal across downtown Niagara Falls, on the U.S. side, and let the force of the falling water provide power. But the digging of these wheel pits weakened the wall of the gorge, which eventually caused the collapse of the Schoellkopf plant.

What I am writing about today is that there must have been a long-forgotten plan to build another power plant in the gorge, on the Canadian side, and power it with water from the hydraulic canal that was dug. This plan must have been abandoned sometime after the decision was made to dig the hydraulic canal, but before the first Sir Adam Beck generating plant was built in 1922.

But some work was done on a section of canal that would bring water to the plant, and we can see that work today. This work is a rock cut, near the river, through which a road or canal could be built.

Highway 420 goes through the rock cut. Most people who cross the Rainbow Bridge into Canada go this way. Images from Google Street View. Images from Google Street View.

But the thing about this road that passes through it is that the rock cut is unnecessary. The hill, known locally as Newman Hill, is not steep. There are two roads parallel to the road that passes through the rock cut, Bender Street and the famed tourist district of Clifton Hill, which scale the hill without any rock cut. In fact, Clifton Hill is considerably steeper than Highway 420 would be without it's rock cut. Murray Street, just south of the Skylon Tower, is not built through a rock cut but through a natural former temporary riverbed which drained glacial melt-water after the end of the last ice age.

After the Honeymoon Bridge collapsed in 1938, the Rainbow Bridge was built across the lower Niagara River, but further downstream. I looked at a Canadian aerial survey that was done of the Niagara area in 1934, maintained by Brock University, and the rock cut was there then. There are no references or photos of digging or blasting the rock cut, as part of building the Rainbow Bridge, only of building the road through the rock cut.

The only way to explain this rock cut, through the limestone rock strata, that is completely unnecessary for the road that passes through it, is that it is a remnant of a plan to build a small power plant, like the others nearby, that never came to fruition. The plan was abandoned when the decision was made to build the much-larger Sir Adam Beck plant, further downstream. The road was later built through it, instead of a canal.

The rock cut, seen in the 1934 aerial photo survey which can also be accessed from Google Earth, goes in a straight line to Victoria Avenue. A path can be seen through it, but no road like there is today. The rock cut was modified to add the link which curves into it from Highway 420, by going under Victoria Avenue. Roberts Street can be seen in the 1934 aerial survey to be a residential streets. When the Rainbow Bridge and the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) were built during the early 1940s, the houses on Roberts Street were removed, it was widened into the highway that it is today, and re-designated as Highway 420.

At the time this plan was made, there was a similar hydraulic canal powering a plant down in the gorge, the Schoellkopf plant, just across the river on the U.S. side. The Canadian plant that was never built would have been near where the Rainbow Bridge is now located. But the rock cut, which so many millions of people have been through upon entering Canada by way of the Rainbow Bridge, but which is so unnecessary to the road which runs through it, is what remains of the plans for that plant today.

Notice how old the bridge that crosses the rock cut appears, that is because it and the rock cut were there before the Rainbow Bridge and the QEW were built during the early 1940s. There are actually two such older bridges across the rock cut. Thus, the rock cut was not made to host the road that would link these two points, the rock cut was already there so it must have been made for something else.

Further from the Rainbow Bridge, the rock cut is walled. This was done when it was used to build the road linking the bridge and the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) in the early 1940s.

This shows that the rock cut was there long before the present road was built through it, meaning that the rock cut had to have been made for some other purpose. It would not have been a road to link to Victoria Avenue since the Rainbow Bridge was not there when the rock cut was made and Bender Street would have been a more direct link from the area of the Honeymoon Bridge. It could not have been for a railroad because the existing rail line is perpendicular to the rock cut and crosses it, by a bridge, without any link. The rock cut was to be part of a power canal to a power plant that was never built.

It seems to me that the Rainbow Bridge was built exactly where it was, to replace the collapsed Honeymoon Bridge, so that a road link into the city and to the QEW could be built through this rock cut that was already there. 

The two red dots, in this image from Google Earth, show the highway that goes through the rock cut. It connects the Rainbow Bridge, at lower right, with Victoria Avenue. 

THE PROTO-CANAL OF NIAGARA

There is a prominent feature in the landscape of the city of Niagara Falls, Canada that I think should have a name. This feature vividly illustrates the history of electrical power generation in the city. The reason that this feature does not receive more notice is that it is best seen from above.

2017 was the one-hundredth anniversary of the digging of the electrical power canal. There had been three small electrical generating plants in the area around the falls. But the electrical power canal, properly called the Hydro Canal for hydroelectric power, would take water from the Welland River, and then bring it right around the city to the west, where it would turn the turbines of the much larger Sir Adam Beck electrical generation plant.

The so-called Hydro Canal today is only one of four routes that water takes to get from the upper Niagara River, or adjacent Welland River, to get the Sir Adam Beck. There are the original two tunnels for water under the city. The large housing for the doors of these tunnels, which can be closed if necessary, are to be seen along the side of the upper river, just north of Chippawa. Directly on the opposite side of the river are the two corresponding doors on the U.S. side. But there is no open canal on the U.S. side. Another tunnel, the fourth route for water, was recently completed that goes right under the city of Niagara Falls. 

This image from Google Earth shows the two door housings on the Canadian side. The doors can shut off the flow of water into the tunnels that run under the city, if necessary for maintenance. A third tunnel has since been built. There are two corresponding door housings on the U.S. side. 

The principle of this generation of electricity by falling water is simply to take water from the level above the falls, have the water drop through a wheel pit or penstock to the level of the river below the falls, so that the kinetic energy of the falling water is converted into electrical energy.

The upper Niagara River, above the falls, is actually at a 90 degree angle to the direction of the lower river, below the falls. The falls just happens to be where the right angle bend in the river is located. Thus, the river is in the form of an "L", with the Canadian side on the outside of the L, and the U.S. side on the inside. The Canadian side of Niagara Falls has the advantage that the falls can be better seen from that side, thus attracting tourists. The U.S. side has the industrial advantage in that a canal has to be dug for a shorter distance in order to take advantage of the power of the falls.

There is a line of high-tension power lines, held aloft by the standard metal towers, which cuts right across the city of Niagara Falls, Canada. These lines do not bring electricity into the city, but take it from the Sir Adam Beck generating stations to points westward. Why would this line of electric cables go right across the city, taking up valuable real estate, when it might simply have gone westward from where it was generated, and would not have to cut across a city?

Another question that occurred to me is why these power lines need such a broad strip of land which, once again, might have been residential real estate? The strip of land on which the electrical lines pass is 300 feet wide, but only as far as Valley Way, after which it gets much narrower as it continues across the city.

The north-south green line in the center of the following images from Google Earth is the hydroelectric line route across the city of Niagara Falls. To the left of the image is the Hydro Canal, which was the original route by which water was taken around the city to generate electricity, before any of the tunnels to the same location were built. To the far right of the image is the lower Niagara River.

This image shows the Proto Canal outlined by three red dots.

If we look at a higher-scale image, we see that the north-south green line points directly toward just west of where the falls are located, around Table Rock House. There is a small power plant down in the gorge, immediately below the main viewing area of the falls. This plant is no longer active, but the building is still there, right against the water of the lower river.

A short tunnel was built under the ground above the plant, to bring water from the upper river so that it would generate electricity while falling. That tunnel is under the ground immediately west of the Niagara Parkway, by which cars drive by the falls. The Illumination Tower, which shines the famous colored lights on the falls at night, is on the ground above the tunnel.

The north-south green line that I am referring to, and which is aligned directly with this tunnel that is under the ground immediately west of the falls, was so laid out because there was to be a continuation of that tunnel. I cannot see it documented anywhere, but this must have been the original plan to bring water from the upper river to the Sir Adam Beck generating station. There is no other reason for such a line of electric towers to cut right across a city, so that it takes up what would otherwise be valuable real estate, and why it would come right to the tunnel, if it continued in a straight line. 

Here is a photo of the pool at Leslie Park. Notice the houses in the background, which are on Morrison Street. This was before Valley Way School was constructed. Those houses are not there now, because it is where the line of electric towers that I am referring to is located. There are electric lines visible, but they are going in a perpendicular direction. The houses must have been removed for the construction of the pipeline of canal as a continuation of the one just west of the falls, which supplied water to the Ontario Generating Plant, but which was never built.

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/397091

What happened is that there was a change in plans. The building of a canal or tunnel in a straight line from just west of the falls through this strip of land that appears as the north-south green line in the satellite image, would just have been too disruptive. The plans were amended to build the southern part of the canal further west, and then link up to this north-south green strip of land.

Notice how the green north-south strip of land, which is 300 feet wide because all of this took place in the days before Canada converted to the Metric System, makes a turn of about 45 degrees to the west, in the southeastern quadrant of the intersection of Morrison Street and Homewood Avenue. Notice also how the actual Hydro Canal that was built makes a similar bend at an angle, at the bridge where Morrison Street crosses over the canal. The wide section of the green strip of land continues until it reaches Valley Way.

Valley Way is the mostly residential street that is built over what used to be a creek called Muddy Run. The creek was diverted underground, where it still flows today. The creek flowed from the area where the present Hydro Canal runs.

This makes the reason for the bend in the green strip of land, along which the electric lines run, very clear. The Hydro Canal was going to be built along the route of what had been Muddy Run, and then along the green strip of land to the Sir Adam Beck Generating Station, where it would be used to generate electricity. There is a natural valley at the intersection of Valley Way and Portage Road, through which the canal would pass.

This is why the broad green strip of land, 300 feet wide, extends only as far as Valley Way. The electric lines continues southward, but the strip of land on which they are constructed gets much narrower. This shows that such a broad strip of land was not necessary to accommodate the power lines, and so it must have been for some other purpose, like the canal.

But the city was growing and this plan was changed also. The entire Hydro Canal was built further west, and this broad green strip of land on which the canal was to be built was used for the electric transmission lines that we see on it today.

This is the only way that I can see to explain this configuration, and why it is such a part of the city's history that it deserves a name, and the logical name would seem to be the "Proto-Canal Of Niagara". 

This image, from Google Earth, is a section of the Proto-Canal Of Niagara. Stanley Avenue, in the foreground, is parallel to Homewood Avenue, in the background.

9) THE AMAZING DONUT SHOP 

Maybe the real focal point of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls is the Country Fresh Donuts store at the corner of Victoria Avenue and Jepson Street. This is not far from the tourist district. Image from Google Street View.

This donut shop is important to this blog because I used to stop there to write down observations that I had just made about the natural history of the area. I began stopping there because it was a familiar location. I had lived nearby when I was a child and my mother used to work at Kennedy's Drug Store, which had been on the site of the donut shop.

This is what the previous building on the site looked like. The house immediately behind was removed and is now the parking lot.

https://nfpl.historicniagara.ca/s/images/item/93603

The donut shop was very popular with local people. Ten years ago the donut shop was in the news across Ontario. A car ran off the road and went right through the building. I didn't see it but it looks like it crashed through the side with the three windows at the right and then crashed right through the back. Somehow no one was hurt. I didn't read that alcohol was a factor.

When the donut shop reopened it was in the news again. This time it was because a long line of people were waiting at the door. This place is so popular locally. It has it's own menu and is known for Wonton soup. 

Some cities have cafes that are globally known. I see this as Niagara's version of Cairo's Cafe Riche or Mumbai's Leopold Cafe.

10) THE ELECTRIC TRANSMISSION TOWERS 

Steel towers carrying electric power lines are to be seen all over the world. But they are part of the background infrastructure that few people pay much attention to. Maybe it's time to change that. All of these images are on the U.S. side.

Electric current comes in two forms, direct current and alternating current. The current always flows from the negative (losing) terminal to the positive (gaining) terminal. The difference is that with direct current the terminals stay the same while with alternating current the two terminals keep alternating back and forth.

Batteries produce direct current. A generator can be configured to produce either. Early in the large-scale generation of electricity there was the "War of the Currents" over which one would predominate. It was at Niagara Falls, where the kinetic energy of the falling water made it an obvious place to produce electricity, that alternating current emerged victorious in the "War of the Currents".

The advantage of alternating current is that the voltage can be easily transformed, stepping it up or down. A transformer is two coils of wire around the same soft iron core. If the input coil has twice as many turns of wire, the resulting current in the output coil will be doubled but the voltage will be divided in half. The voltage is the pressure pushing the current while the current is the actual flow of electrons. The total power, which is the voltage multiplied by the current, remains the same.

Electric wires always have some resistance to current flow. Transmission of power over a long distance can mean considerable losses. But the losses are much less if the voltage is high and the current is low. This is why alternating current won "The War of the Currents". The voltage is stepped up for long-distance transmission and then stepped down at the other end for everyday use.

An advantage of direct current is that electrochemical processes tend to use it. Alternating current must have a number of cycles per second and that can mean that bringing an electrical device from one country to another could be a problem. As far as I can see, all countries today use either 50 or 60 cycles per second and from 110 to 230 volts.

Long-distance transmission of alternating current started with the wires being supported by wooden poles. But with high voltage it was safer to have the wires higher off the ground and the wooden poles were replaced with steel transmission towers.

What I want to present today is that Niagara Falls is where the "War of the Currents" was won by alternating current and the first large-scale alternating current production station was on the U.S. side of Niagara Falls. So shouldn't the oldest metal transmission towers also be in and around Niagara Falls? I am sure that Niagara Falls has the greatest number of towers per person in the world. What I want to point out is that it also should have the oldest ones, and electrical power is now old enough for this to have historical value.

The older metal transmission towers tend to be lower than the newer ones. Also two-legged towers tend to be generally older than four-legged. When the large-scale electric power industry was getting started the mass-produced steel industry was relatively new and steel was costly. Also there were not the modern cranes available to service high wires. But just because transmission towers are lower doesn't always mean that they are older because sometimes runs of power lines must go underneath other lines.

Both electric lines and transmission towers tend to get replaced over time but sturdy transmission towers may not need replacement. Also, since the design of four-legged towers must be flared, the shorter and older towers occupy less space and there may not be room for them to be replaced with newer and higher towers.

The result is that the area of Niagara Falls, NY must have the oldest steel electric transmission towers in the world. This deserves to be a tourist attraction.

There are four electric generating plants that we are dealing with here. These are the plants, on the U.S. side, in chronological order:

The first large-scale alternating current generating plant was the Adams Power Station, in Niagara Falls. This is the most important of the four. One building of this plant remains today. A long tunnel was dug to the water level in the Lower Niagara River, below the falls. Water was taken from the upper river and the kinetic energy of the water falling down pits turned turbines to generate electricity, the spent water then flowed out through the tunnel.

The local sewage treatment plant is built on part of the site that the Adams Power Station was on and uses the old tunnel to empty treated wastewater into the Lower Niagara River. You can see the outflow just to the right of the Rainbow Bridge.

The second power station on the U.S. side of Niagara Falls was the Schoellkopf Power Station, in the gorge alongside the Lower Niagara River. There was a canal across downtown Niagara Falls, known as the Hydraulic Canal. The yellow line shows the route of the Hydraulic Canal, it was filled in after the collapse of the Schoellkopf Plant in 1956. The falls are to the left in the image and the light green square in the center is the casino. Image from Google Earth.

This canal took water from the Upper Niagara River and used the kinetic energy of the falling water to power various mills along the gorge of the Lower Niagara River. The canal was purchased at auction and the Schoellkopf Power Station built, in the early Twentieth Century, to be powered by the falling water. The Schoellkopf Power Station collapsed into the Lower Niagara River in 1956.

This inlet, in downtown Niagara Falls NY, was the water intake for the Adams Power Station. Image from Google Earth.

The Huntley Power Plant, the third, was built in Tonawanda. Unlike the ones in Niagara Falls this one ran on coal, rather than falling water. But this plant is useful for comparison because it was built at about the same time as the Schoellkopf Plant, in the early Twentieth Century.

The Robert Moses Generating Plant, in Lewiston just north of Niagara Falls, is the only active electric generating facility on the U.S. side today. It was begun after the collapse of the Schoellkopf Plant, and was completed in the early 1960s.

Let's have a look at some of the electric transmission towers in the Niagara Falls NY area. I credit two images to Google Street View, the rest of the photos I took myself.

Here are examples of what we will call the "Modern Four-Legged Towers". These were mostly built in the late 1950s for the Robert Moses Generating Plant. The newer towers are to be seen all around Niagara Falls but are not the ones that we are concerned with here.

The following two photos are of what we will call the "Older Two-Legged Towers". This run of power lines is seen crossing Niagara Falls Blvd., in Niagara Falls, at St. John's Parkway. This line continues until it crosses Niagara Falls Blvd. again in Tonawanda. These towers must have been replacements of earlier ones because, in the late Nineteenth Century, a run from the Adams Station followed this line to Buffalo, where electricity from Niagara Falls famously powered the Pan Am Exhibition of 1901. When two-legged towers are used it seems that there is a four-legged one whenever the wires make a turn.

Here is the most important ones, the ones we are looking for because they are the oldest. Let's call these the "Oldest Original Towers". The following three photos were taken in the North End of Niagara Falls, at the intersection of Hyde Park Blvd. and Witmer Road. 

The Wikipedia article on "Adams Power Plant" states that it had a run to Lockport, which must have included these towers. The Huntley Power Plant, in Tonawanda, is useful for comparison here because, being built at about the same time as the Schoellkopf Plant, it has many of the "Older Two-Legged Towers" around it, but none that look like these. Therefore these towers must be from the Adams Plant.

This is more of the "Oldest Original Towers". These are on Tremont Street, in North Tonawanda, and the line runs into Tonawanda, parallel to the Veterans Memorial Highway. This was the line that originally brought power from Niagara Falls to Buffalo. The first wooden poles must have been replaced with these. This line is just as historic as the Erie Canal, which it crosses.

Lockport has a three-legged version of the "Oldest Original Towers". These are really antiques, along Transit Road just north of Tops.

Image from Google Street View

This looks like another version of the "Oldest Original Towers", at the intersection of Hyde Park Blvd. and Buffalo Avenue, in Niagara Falls. The village of LaSalle was east of Niagara Falls when the Adams Plant began transmission of power. The lines ran eastward along the upper river then turned northward through the gap between Niagara Falls and LaSalle, on both sides of the factory district, before turning eastward again to form the line that we saw crossing Niagara Falls Blvd. at St. John's Parkway. This took the lines around LaSalle. Lines from the Robert Moses Plant were later put through this same gap.

Finally these two photos are of one of the tall towers that carries power lines across the Niagara River. This appears to be a very old style and I think they should be included in the "Oldest Original Towers". The one pictured is between the Robert Moses Parkway and the Upper Niagara River, approximately adjacent to 56th Street. There are two others completing the crossing to Grand Island and then two more crossing from Grand Island to Tonawanda.

This run, from Niagara Falls to Buffalo, continues across Grand Island. Most of the "Oldest Original Towers" have been replaced, but not all of them. There are still a few in various places, and I believe that they deserve credit as the oldest electric transmission towers in the world. This one is along Long Road, on Grand Island.

Image from Google Street View

11) NIAGARA NATURAL HISTORY SUMMARY

Many people go on vacation to Niagara Falls during the summer and I would like to make the natural history that I hope to have added there easier to understand. It would be helpful to have some familiarity with the Niagara area to understand this.

EARLY LIMESTONE FORMATION

Eons ago, in warm shallow seas, microscopic creatures lived and died. Their bodies piled up on the bottom to eventually form layers of limestone (calcium carbonate). These layers can be seen today in the gorge of Niagara Falls. Even before that, waves pulverized rocks into sand which then formed layers on the bottom of the sea. The land was later forced upward by tectonic activity, and this forms the geological foundation of the area.

You can see the layers of limestone rock strata in the walls of the Niagara Gorge at the falls. Touch the image in the upper left to enlarge it.

THE FORMATION OF THE NIAGARA ESCARPMENT

Most likely, a meteor composed of magnesium landed in the sea at some point. This led to a layer of limestone composed of magnesium carbonate, instead of the usual calcium carbonate. Ordinary limestone is dissolved by water and erosion over long periods of time. But the layer of magnesium carbonate was much more resistant to erosion.

This top layer of highly resistant limestone resulted in what we see today as the Niagara Escarpment. It may appear to be some type of fault line, but it is actually formed by uneven erosion due to shielding by this erosion-resistant top layer of limestone. The actual name of this type of limestone is Lockport Dolostone, named for the nearby city on the edge of the escarpment. The Niagara Escarpment is believed to be at least two hundred million years old.

The Niagara Escarpment, which appears as a cliff, can be seen across the following satellite image in Niagara County. South is above the escarpment and north is below it. The escarpment shows as the concentration of dark green tree growth on it.

This hard top layer of rock is actually why the falls at Niagara exist. The falls were originally where Lewiston-Queenston is today. But the falling water dissolves the softer limestone below until the top layer has nothing supporting it from beneath, and pieces of it break off and fall away. This is how the falls have worked their way northward, to where they are now, over the past twelve thousand years, or so.

In the center of the following satellite image, notice how narrow the Niagara River is in the bottom half of the image. The narrowing point is the Niagara Escarpment at Lewiston-Queenston. This is where the falls began, at the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago. The falls have been steadily cutting their way through the rock strata, and moving backward to where they are now. 

The bulge in the lower Niagara River is the Niagara Glen. It is basically a pile of rock that formed thousands of years ago when the river split in two while eroding it's way through the underlying limestone. This formed an island with high limestone cliffs. But the island collapsed, leaving the pile of rock that we see today.

 THE APPALACHIAN COLLISION

The next major event after the formation of the Niagara Escarpment by gradual uneven erosion is the sliding tectonic collision, between what is now Africa and what is now North America, that formed the ridges and mountains across the eastern United States known as the Appalachians. This exerted extreme northward pressure on the area.

Across Pennsylvania, to the south, the collision front of the Appalachians underwent a major change in direction due to the Canadian Shield to the north, the dense layer of rock underlying the eastern half of Canada. This forms a line, which I named The Humber Line because it passes through Toronto and forms the change in elevation seen in east-west streets west of downtown , that forms the eastern side of the Humber Valley. It also forms Georgian Bay as it goes right along it's main axis.

The Humber Line also passes directly through the Niagara Area. The pressure against the Niagara Escarpment increased as the point of collision moved eastward, across Pennsylvania, and the direction of tectonic pressure shifted from northwestward to northward.

The Appalachians curve across Pennsylvania. The "focal point" of the curve is around the city of Harrisburg. This change in direction changed the direction of the northward tectonic pressure. Notice how the straight line easternmost shore of Lake Erie south of downtown Buffalo forms a straight line along the Humber Line.

Following this same line to the northwest, it forms the straight line southwestern shore of Navy Island, in the Niagara River above the falls.

This line, due to the change in direction of the pressure of the Appalachian collision, continues to the northwest, crosses Lake Ontario, to form Humber Bay and the Humber Valley in Toronto, hence the name of the line as the Humber Line.

On a large scale, we can see again that the long axis of Georgian Bay, in Ontario, points in a straight line to Harrisburg and the line passes right along the straight line of the easternmost shore of Lake Erie south of downtown Buffalo, as described above. The Bruce Peninsula, which separates Georgian Bay from Lake Huron, as well as Manitoulin Island, is actually formed by the Niagara Escarpment, which also forms Northern Michigan and continues all the way to Wisconsin.

THE "BREAKING POINT" OF THE NIAGARA ESCARPMENT

At first, the pressure was not enough to actually move the escarpment but it raised the rocky ridge along Route 65, to the west of the Ontario towns of Fonthill, Ridgeville and, Pelham. As the collision front moved eastward, the pressure reached a point where the entire escarpment broke and shifted. This is at Short Hills Provincial Park, to the southwest of St. Catharines, and is directly opposite the point at which the rocky ridge terminates. This is because, from this point eastward, the tectonic pressure went into moving the escarpment rather than raising the ridge.

The pressure also went into fracturing the limestone layers to the south of the escarpment to form a broad valley in the rock strata. This is what I pointed out, and named "The Niagara Valley". On the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, at least that portion which is not covered by the Niagara Falls Moraine today, the land gets lower as we go eastward. This can be readily seen on Thorold Stone Road. But on the American side, by the falls, the ground generally gets lower as we go westward.

The lower Niagara River, below the falls, as well as the falls themselves, are at the bottom of this valley. The strata on the American side is actually tilted to the southwest because the escarpment is shaped like a saw tooth, rather than a level plateau. On the map, it can be seen that the lower Niagara River, which flows though the nadir of the Niagara Valley, is roughly parallel to the segment of the escarpment just east of the "breaking point" at Short Hills Provincial Park.

Short Hills Provincial Park is where the Niagara Escarpment changes direction. The Park, in the center of the following image, is like the bottom of a "V" with the escarpment in different directions on each side.

 THE END OF THE LAST ICE AGE

This concludes the geological portion of the Niagara story. Far in the distant future, ice ages began. The most recent of these concluded about 12,000 years ago. The rest of the story involves the glaciers that came with these ice ages.

A glacier is a vast sheet of ice, about one or two kilometers in height. Glaciers begin to form when the temperature gets cold enough that the snow from one winter has not melted when the following winter begins. Snow piles up year after year, decade after decade, and century after century. The weight of the snow above compresses it into ice.

When an object is large enough, such as this vast sheet of ice, it is affected by the rotation of the earth. The glacial ice is thus pulled southward, toward the equator, and somewhat eastward by the earth's eastward rotation. This towering mountain of ice pushes tremendous amounts of dirt and rock in front of it, where it remains when the ice age ends and the glaciers melt.

One such mass, deposited by a glacier in a previous ice age, is the Niagara Falls Moraine. This covers much of the city of Niagara Falls, Canada, and is best seen as the high ground on the Canadian side by the falls. The Niagara Valley can be seen on Thorold Stone Road only because that area was not covered by the moraine.

More soil and loose rock was deposited against the Niagara Escarpment by the moving glacial ice. The reason that Ridge Road, around Lewiston, is so-named is that it is built upon a ridge along the bottom of the escarpment that was put there by the glacier.

The glaciers of each ice age obliterates the drainage pattern of the rivers over the land, and at the conclusion of the ice age the pattern forms anew. There was a predecessor of the Niagara River in the warm period before the last ice age. This warm period ended maybe 20,000 years ago.

This predecessor river is known as the St. David's River for the Ontario town where it met the escarpment. The St. David's River was filled in by the soil and loose rock pushed into it by the glacier of the ice age. But when the present Niagara River, working it's way northward, met the looser fill of the former St. David's River in the midst of the solid rock layers, it caused the Niagara River to change direction and for the river to have to form a whirlpool to accommodate the change of direction. This is seen today in the whirlpool of the lower river.

On the QEW (Queen Elizabeth Way), west of Stanley Avenue, there is a broad dip in the level of the roadway opposite the village of St. David's. That is the remains of the St. David's River from before the last ice age. This forms a break in the Niagara Escarpment which is visible in the following satellite imagery. In the center of the following image you can see, by the dark green line of the trees, the break in the Niagara Escarpment at the Ontario village of St. David's. 

The remains of this former river can also be seen on Goat Island, on the American side at the falls. There is a low waterfalls that stretches across the upper Niagara River, not far above the main falls, that is known as "The Green Cascade". This was cut by the flowing waters of the St. David's River. On a line with the Green Cascade there is a low area on Goat Island, around where the Three Sisters Islands are, that is also the result of this former river.

This is the beginning of the Green Cascade, a low waterfall stretching above the Niagara River some distance above the main waterfall. This is a remnant of the St. David's River from the warm period before the last ice age. Image from Google Street View.

 
The line of the Green Cascade, across the upper Niagara River, leads straight to the embayment at Dufferin Islands, on the Canadian side above the falls. This is because this was once a whirlpool. The embayment at Dufferin Islands is almost exactly the same size and shape as the whirlpool in the lower river.

This is the whirlpool in the Niagara River, in the lower river below the falls where the river changes direction.

Now look at the embayment at Dufferin Islands, right in the center of the image, seen from the same altitude.

That is because the embayment at Dufferin Islands was a whirlpool in the warm period before the last ice age, where the St. David's River changed direction.

But why did the former St. David's River follow this particular course? The answer appears to be fairly obvious. The Humber Line, described above, passes right through this gap in the Niagara Escarpment which marks the route of the former St. David's River. It was following this Humber Line.

Look at how a continuation of the line of flow into the Niagara Whirlpool leads directly to the gap in the escarpment at St. Davids. This line is a segment of the Humber Line.

 LAKE TONAWANDA

The drainage flow pattern in the Niagara area was not always as it is now. There was once a lake, named Lake Tonawanda, which existed for most of the time since the end of the last ice age. There is a high point in the rock layers alongside the lower river, known as the Lyell-Johnson Ridge, that can be seen as peaking at Cedar Avenue on the American side and Eastwood Street, on the Canadian side. This point is not far north of the Rainbow Bridge.

When the falls, cutting it's way northward from it's beginning on the Niagara Escarpment, cut through this ridge then Lake Tonawanda drained. All that remains of it today is the broad upper Niagara River above the falls. The former shores of this lake can still be seen in many places on the U.S. side. North of the former K-Mart, on Military Road in the Town of Niagara, if you look southward it seems as if you might be looking out over a lake, and 3500 years ago you would have been.

The slope up to higher ground in the city of Tonawanda used to be the southern shore of the lake, which continues eastward toward Rochester. The deepest part of this lake was where the falls are now located, my guess is that the depth there was about 9 meters.

The so-called Alabama Swamps, east of the Niagara area, are all that remain of the former Lake Tonawanda which existed for about 7,000 years after the end of the last ice age.

OTHER COULD-HAVE-BEEN ROUTES OF THE NIAGARA RIVER

In Lockport NY, we can see traces of the natural history also. The Niagara River was not the only route by which the former lake Tonawanda drained into Lake Ontario. State Street is built upon an old river bed that once was another drainage route, the legacy of this route is Eighteen Mile Creek. If not for the Niagara Valley that I described, the Niagara River might be there today.

Evidence that there was such a drainage route in the warm period prior to the last ice age can also be seen in the gap in the escarpment adjacent to Upper Mountain Road and Sunset Drive. The flow of water through here not only carved this gap but weakened the rock layers, causing part of the escarpment to collapse and form a hill called Gothic Hill.

The V-shaped area of dark green trees in the following image is a gap in the Niagara Escarpment at Lockport, New York. This was formed by the flow of water along another route by which the former Lake Tonawanda drained. This is to the east of the present Niagara River. The Niagara River might have been here except for the Niagara Valley, described above, through which the river like the St. David's River before it, ended up flowing.

GLACIAL IMPACT CRATERS IN NIAGARA FALLS, CANADA

Around where the falls are now located, massive bergs of ice slid along the slope of the strata to the southwest to compact the edge of the Niagara Falls Moraine to form the higher ground above the falls and Queen Victoria Park. As temperatures gradually warmed, this massive glacier fractured laterally. A vast slab of ice, weighing millions of tons, slid off the top and crashed to the ground below.

The result can be seen today in the sudden rise in elevation on Lundy's Lane/Ferry Street, just east of Portage Road/Main Street. The same rise can be seen on Allendale Avenue and Grey Avenue. This is an impact crater formed by the falling ice. The melting slab produced a rush of water, and the channel that it carved can be seen on McRae Street just east of Stanley Avenue.

A similar impact crater can be seen along Victoria Avenue, and streets to the west, and in the "valley" portion of Valley Way, between Sixth and Fourth Avenues. The slab of ice that formed this crater also came from the mountain of ice pressed against the higher ground at Queen Victoria Park.

Notice how Main Street, at the far left of the map, forms an arc with Valley Way, at the top of the map. That is because Main Street / Portage Road is built along the crest of one glacial impact crater and Valley Way, illustrated by the yellow line, is built along the bottom of another. The Niagara River is the blue color on the map.

The "valley" in Valley Way must have continued westward, over where the school is now located. But the tremendous amount of water from the melting ice seems to have washed it away. Water would have been raging down the slope around Thorold Stone Road, and it must have appeared as do the upper rapids above the falls today. From Stanley Avenue, there is a drop in elevation looking eastward along streets from Elm to Cedar. Water would have rushed down this, until reaching level ground where it would have flowed southward.

Such was the force of this flowing water that it not only washed away a portion of the valley along Valley Way, but it carved away at the opposite side of the valley. Notice the curved drop in elevation that can be seen in Leslie Park, at Sixth Avenue and Valley Way, and also notice that this curve is located just adjacent to where the "valley" portion ends. I only noticed this because I used to sled down that curved slope as a boy, and go to the school across the street.

Notice the curve in the center of the following image of Leslie Park. This curve, just south of Valley Way, is the crest of a cut that was made in the side of the glacial impact crater by water flowing down the north side of the valley formed by the crater as the glacial ice melted at the end of the last ice age.

This formed a temporary river, in my writing I though it logical to name it the Valley Way River, draining the water from the melted glaciers. The river flowed along the nadir of the impact crater, but once it got beyond the crater it shifted northward to a more logical place between the southward slope above the escarpment and the northward slope of the impact crater, along Park Street.

Such sliding bergs of ice created many ridges in Niagara County, particularly in the southwestern quadrant of the county because the escarpment gets lower going eastward and this has the effect of sloping the rock strata.

WHY ARE THERE TWO FALLS AT NIAGARA?

Have you ever thought about how illogical it is that there are two falls at Niagara? The American Falls is higher in elevation, and carries less then 10% of the total water flow, so why does it even exist? Why doesn't all of the water just go over the Horseshoe Falls? There is a simple answer.

One berg of ice slid down the southward slope that can be seen along the numbered streets in the 70s, in Niagara Falls, NY. It kept sliding southward until the slope of the rock strata became more westward, so that it changed direction, carving away the ground beneath it all the way. We can see it's trail today as Burnt Ship Creek, across northern Grand Island and than in the gap between Goat Island and the U.S. mainland. This berg is why the American Falls are there.

Has anyone noticed the similarity between the wide marsh area at the northern end of Grand Island, NY, and the branch of the upper Niagara River that flows to the American Falls? The span of both is illustrated by a yellow line.

 

The reason is that the two channels were formed by the same sliding berg of ice as the glacial ice melted and broke up at the end of the last ice age. The wide marsh area separates Grand Island from Buckhorn Island. The berg continued sliding downstream and carved the channel leading to the American Falls.

That explains the apparently illogical fact that the American Falls even exists when all of the water could flow over the main falls, which is lower in elevation. Less than 10% of the total water flows over the American Falls.

Again, this is the Humber Line that I discovered.

This is only a brief summary of the natural history of the Niagara area, in chronological order. 

12) GLACIAL EFFECTS 

If visiting Niagara Falls don't forget about my tourist attractions on the Canadian side. The main attraction is, of course, the Falls. But you can see how glaciation has shaped the landscape perhaps better than anywhere else in the world, and right near the Falls.

Ice ages are characterized by much of the world's land area being covered by glaciers. These glaciers might have been 1-2 km thick. These glaciers began to form when it got cold enough so that the snow of one winter has not melted when the snow of the following winter begins to fall. The snow piles up year after year, decade after decade, and century after century. The weight of the snow above compacts it into ice. The limiting factor in the height of the glacier is the altitude of the clouds from which the snow falls.

The last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. The glaciers that covered much of the world's land area began to melt and break apart. A loose piece of glacier slid across the underlying rock strata which, near the Falls, is tilted to the southwest. It collided with what is known as the Niagara Falls Moraine, which was deposited by glacial ice of the previous ice age.

The moving ice compacted the moraine and Queen Victoria Park is now on the area that was compacted. This is what formed the bluff on the west side of the park. This was all before the present Niagara River and the Falls were formed.

The red line in the following image from Google Earth is the bluff that I am referring to. The white areas are the Upper Rapids and the two Falls.

You can see the bluff without the red line because dark green trees grow all along it. Image from Google Earth.

What happened next is that the piece of glacier fractured laterally. Two great slabs of ice, each weighing millions of tons, crashed to earth. These formed what I refer to as "glacial impact craters". 

The yellow arc in the top image is the rise in elevation going toward Portage Road / Main Street as can be seen going westward on Ferry Street. I believe that this crater came first and then the second slab of ice slid off and formed the "valley" section of Valley Way, as indicated by the white line at the top. Much of the valley formed by this impact was erased by the vast amount of melting water from the ice flowing southward. I looked for more such craters but didn't find any.

Lundy's Lane is the continuation of Ferry Street to the west of the yellow arc. It is built upon a ridge that was formed by another piece of glacier, at the end of the last ice age, sliding southward and plowing up the land in front of it. The ice was melting at the same time and the ridge remains today where the sliding ice had melted so much that it couldn't push the soil in front of it anymore.

There is a red rock, upon which a plaque is mounted, in Leslie Park, at the intersection of Jepson Street and Valley Way. This is granite that is not native to the area. Granite like this is native to the Canadian Shield, far to the north. This is a broken piece of granite that was carried by the moving glacier and is known as a "glacial erratic".

In the first of the following two images from Google Street View the rock, with it's plaque, is seen between the two cars. In the second image it is seen from the side.