How often do you have the opportunity to be sitting on a
park bench in a stand of white cedars and gaze across a river and see another
country? We had that chance during this week of August 10th. We have not
visited the Falls in many, many years. Niagara Falls has been its consistent, spectacular
self since the beginning of time; before Columbus discovered our eastern shores,
before Moses parted the Red Sea, before Adam was created. The Niagara has
thundered and roared. The area nearby in the historic park is being kept as
natural as possible on the American border without becoming blatantly
commercialized as the Canadian border appears to be. The once pleasant skyline
of the Canadian side lended itself as a panoramic backdrop to the natural world,
unfortunately, Canadian tourism industry has taken over the real estate along
the Niagara River with restaurants, casinos, hotels and wax museums. It is sad
to see. We ponder what the 1800s residents would think if they were to glance across
the river now.
We began our leisurely stroll to the Prospect Point Observation
Tower, built in 1961 and recently renovated in 2001. The 282 foot Tower extends
out over the Niagara Gorge and gives unique and unobstructed views of the
tumbling whitewater cascades of the American and Canadian Falls. We did not go up into the tower because of the
crowds but spent time on the platform leaning over the rails and looking down
into the spiraling water and feeling the gentle mists of the American Falls.
We continued our stroll through the park that led us along
paved walkways to a pedestrian bridge that goes over to Green Island. The original
wooden bridge, built in early 1900, has been replaced with a sturdy cement
bridge that crosses over the American rapids and then onto Goat Island. The
newer pathway follows the serene Niagara River that intensifies its current leading
to the American Falls. 
At the crest of
the Falls we stood at the edge of the Bridal Veil Falls on Luna Island. Luna
Island, all ¾ of an acre of it, is named so because lunar rainbows were seen
over it on bright moonlit nights. Unfortunately, because of the nightly
illumination of the Falls, moon rainbows are rarely seen today. Bridal Veil has
a straight vertical fall of 78 feet and then continues its plunge onto the
boulders into the Maid of the Mist pool that totals a181 foot drop. From our vantage point we watched several tour
boats, Maid of the Mist, depart from the Canadian side to pass by the American
Falls and challenge the powerful current in the basin of Horseshoe Falls. These
two double deck tour boats are each 80-feet, have two 350-horsepower engines
that carry the 600-passenger vessels against the powerful current. The Maid of
the Mist tours have been in operation for 150 years.
As we meandered Goat Island we were indulged with spectacular
views of the Falls. We found ourselves in the middle of Goat Island and could
hear the continuous roar of the falls but could not see its source. So we
continued on until we began our downward trod to Terrapin Point, as close to
the Horseshoe Falls as possible on the American side. Terrapin Point at one time was a group of boulders
that resembled giant tortoises. At first this area was accessible by
footbridges to where a lighthouse sat until 1887 and was then closed due to its
dangerous access. Watching the roaring thunder of the waterfall is
spellbinding. We wondered about the
silence of the gorge if the water were to stop…in answer to this query we found
an article that described an ice jam that dammed up at the mouth of Niagara River
at Lake Erie in 1848. For nearly 40 hours the water over the Horseshoe and
American Falls came to a trickle. Mills and factories that depended on the
power of the water were suddenly quiet. The sound of the roar of thunderous
water was silent. Some people were adventurous enough to get to the dried river
bottom of the gorge and scavenged for things that had been at the bottom of the
river for hundreds of years, even tomahawks, muskets and War of 1812 artifacts.
While the river was quieted the crews of the Maid of the Mist even blasted away
at riverbed boulders that hindered their navigation on the river. It must have
been a quietness inside of quiet for those who lived near the Falls to have
suddenly heard silence. To have not heard the echoing roar of the powerful
force of water cascading hundreds of feet to the gorge must have been unnatural.
In 1953 and 1969 the Army Corps of
Engineers intervened by building coffer dams to slow down the river’s flow to be
able to study the erosion problems at the Fall’s edge.
It is tremendous to stand at the brink of this power, this
intense energy, and have your senses explode with the sound of roaring thunder,
the sight of millions of tons of water torrenting hundreds of feet downward, the
feel of the cool mist across our faces. The
incredible volume of water never stops flowing. Incredible to think of this
falling water and mist creating ice formations along the banks of the falls and
river that become mounds of ice as thick as fifty feet. If the winter is cold
for long enough, the ice will completely stretch across the river and form what
is known as an ice bridge. This ice bridge can extend for several miles downriver
until it reaches the area known as the lower rapids. Until 1912 visitors were
allowed to actually walk out on the ice bridge and view the Falls from below. In
1888 a local newspaper reported that at least 20,000 people watched or
tobogganed on the ice and shanties were selling liquor and photographs. The adventure of being on an ice bridge was
stopped in 1912 when the ice bridge broke up and three tourists died.
Incredible as well are those who challenge the Falls by
pitching themselves over and downward. There have been, since 1901, fifteen
people to dare survival of the Falls, on various flotation devices, some of
which were no match for the power of the water, from barrels to kayaks to jet
skis. Of these fifteen five died during their challenge. All daredevils
challenged the Horseshoe Falls because of the treacherous rock formations at
the base of the Americans.
We started our trek back, taking time to stop and take in
the scenery, taking advantage of nicely placed park benches. And noticing that
no matter where we were we could still hear the thunderous roar of the
waterfalls.
