Discover Niagara Falls
From remarkable feats of engineering to incredible daredevil acts, Natasha Dragun reveals fascinating facts about Niagara Falls.
Every day, millions of gallons of water thunder over Niagara Falls, Canada. At around 95 decibels, the noise is so loud that it has been compared to being at a rock concert, or beside a jet plane taking off. But for five months in 1969, everything went quiet. Well, quieter.
When the Falls Ran Dry
Straddling the border between the US and Canada, the continent’s greatest cascades are actually three falls: Horseshoe (also known as Canadian), American and Bridal Veil. Back in the late 1960s, they were partly “turned off” by engineers and researchers, who were concerned at the time about the erosion of bedrock. The American section of the falls was completely dewatered (the official term for the procedure), with a 180-metre cofferdam created to divert water from the Niagara River to Horseshoe instead, revealing the falls’ craggy, and usually submerged, floor and stone cliff.
It was billed as a once-in-a-lifetime event, although it had happened naturally more than a century earlier, when an upstream ice jam reduced the falls’ flow of water to a trickle back in 1848. And it is, in fact, set to happen again – some time over the next five years, engineers need to embark on another round of dewatering so they can demolish two 117-year-old bridges that have reached the end of their lives, replacing them with new, and more structurally sturdy, ones. The 1969 dewatering showed that the falls’ bedrock was sound, after all. And turning off the torrent gave crews the rare opportunity to clean up the riverbed, which was littered with millions of coins – as well as two bodies.
Barrel Rides and Daredevils
It’s a long way down, with the falls ranging in height from around 20 to 50 metres. But it’s a tumble that is survivable. Daredevils have been rolling over the falls in barrels for more than a century, inspired by Annie Edson Taylor, who lived to tell the tale of her drop in a pressurised wooden barrel in 1901. The 63-year-old schoolteacher emerged rather bruised and battered, but alive, although many others who followed her lead have been less fortunate.
In 2012, Nik Wallenda also survived his heart-stopping daredevil feat at the falls, crossing their brink from the US to Canada on a five-centimetre-wide tightrope. The half-kilometre walk – which required him to wear a safety harness for the first time in his career – earned him a Guinness World Record, just one of nine titles he holds for various acrobatic feats.
Wallenda waged a two-year legal battle to convince authorities to let him cross the falls, after such stunts were banned here in the late 19th century, about 40 years after the first Niagara tightrope traverse was made in 1859. He was also required to carry his passport with him, as Canadian immigration officials were the first people to greet him when he finally stepped off the cable, 25 minutes after leaving America.
More than 4,000 people on the American side were given free tickets to watch Wallenda walk, which is a drop in the river compared to the daily average of 82,000 people (or 30 million a year) who descend to take a happy snap by the falls’ edge.
No doubt cameras and mobile phones will be on the list of recovered objects the next time the water is turned off. To see the Niagara Falls for yourself, join us on the 27 Day Canada Complete tour or our 9 Day Eastern Delight tour.
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