Upon visiting Niagara Falls in 1848, Abraham Lincoln marveled over its constant flow. “Niagara is strong, and fresh today as ten thousand years ago,” he wrote. “In that long—long time, never still for a single moment. Never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested.”
Little could he have imagined that more than a century later, the rushing, thunderous roar of American Falls—which, along with Horseshoe Falls and Bridal Veils Falls, make up Niagara Falls—would be silenced. For five months, the American Falls stood eerily bare, a 100-foot-high dry cliff.
The “dewatering” of Niagara Falls drew 100,000 curious spectators in its first week. But it wasn’t the only time humans meddled with the iconic wonder.
Niagara Falls as Destination vs. Power Source
“Niagara Falls is as much engineered as it is natural,” says Daniel Macfarlane, an environmental historian and author of Fixing Niagara Falls. Ever since hydroelectric power plants began harnessing the tremendous power of the falls in the late 19th century, there has been a constant tension between energy production and preserving the falls’ natural splendor.
“Too much water going to the hydroelectric stations would have a negative impact on the aesthetic appeal of the falls. There would be thin flows and exposed rock instead of a solid curtain,” explains Macfarlane.
The 1950 Niagara River Diversion Treaty, signed by the United States and Canada and currently still in place, aimed to address this balance: Half of the Niagara River’s 200,000 cubic feet-per-second flow had to plunge over the brink during the peak tourist window (April 1 to September 15, between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m.) Outside of that time, that number dwindled to a quarter, with the remaining rush of water diverted through underwater tunnels to hydroelectric turbines.
The treaty also put in place a number of tweaks and tucks for the largest of the three cataracts, Horseshoe Falls. Engineers excavated and deepened the flanks of the waterfall, and reduced its lip length by several hundred feet to give the impression of more water volume flowing over an unbroken crestline, explains Macfarlane.
“Water diversions for hydropower are enormous, but their effect on the scenery is limited by massive engineering projects that keep everything looking the same,” writes Ginger Strand, in Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies. “The end result is an environment that elides any conflict between landscape enjoyment and resource expenditure. You see? it cheerfully declares: we can have our lake and use it too.”
But considering 90 percent of the spectacular Horseshoe Falls lie in Canada, which had already been drawing more tourists, “Americans got jealous,” says Macfarlane. “Canada was perceived as benefiting more from the improvements.” Citizens of Niagara Falls, New York wanted American Falls to get its own makeover, too.
The Imminent ‘Death’ of the Falls
The public campaign began with a series of articles in 1965 by Cliff Spieler, the Sunday editor of The Niagara Falls Gazette, decrying the imminent “death” of Niagara Falls. Significant rockfalls in 1931 and 1954 had caused a pile of “unsightly boulders” to form at its base. In some areas, the accumulated pile of rocks (known as talus) measured up to 10 stories high, effectively halving the height of the American Falls. Spieler warned that another major rockfall could shrivel the waterfall to mere rapids, and that “remedial” work should begin at once.
The campaign was a wild success. At a public hearing in 1966, Niagara Falls mayor E. Dent Lackey declared, “If we are to determine what is beautiful or what is not beautiful by a majority vote, the majority of the people overwhelmingly say that the rockfall does mar the beauty of the Falls and therefore it is a violation of the law to continue to leave it.”
The International Joint Commission, the binational border agency, created a board to study the issue, and a plan was set in motion for one of the most remarkable human efforts to conquer nature.
The Great Dewatering
Starting June 9, 1969, the Albert Elia Construction Company, under the direction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Buffalo District, dumped more than 28,000 tons of rock to create a 600-foot-wide cofferdam to divert the flow of the Niagara River from American Falls towards Horseshoe Falls. The once mighty American Falls was soon reduced to a mere drip.
With the falls “dewatered,” the Army Corp engineers set to work studying the cause of the rockfalls and how they could be prevented. They drilled into the rock to extract core samples, ran colored dye into cracks to trace water flow, and installed sensors to measure rock stress levels and movement. “What they found was that the rock talus was likely holding up the waterfall, so if they took the talus away more rocks would fall,” says Macfarlane.
In 1975, the International Joint Commission published its final report, taking into account surveys sent to the public, the hefty price tag to remove the talus, and that the talus was likely propping up the face of the American Falls itself. The report’s final decision: no talus would be removed.
But it wasn’t all for naught. While the Falls were dewatered, the Army Corp engineers seized the opportunity to remove rock debris and stabilize the structure. “They used cement and bolts and tendons to help hold things together, essentially stapling some parts of the rock to keep it in place,” says Macfarlane. It seems to have worked. “No major rocks have fallen since.”
