Niagara River / Lake Erie

We’re looking at the famous falls of Niagara, except this time from the Canadian side: a mirror image to American tourist maps (to view a larger version of the image, follow this hyperlink). It appears in a 1927 promotional brochure from the motor age, with a selling point that “There is no Automobile Road Through the Gorge.” Back in 1890 an electric railway had been built between Niagara Falls and Lewiston by a Buffalo businessman—not along the rim but running down through the gorge alongside the Niagara River! Despite considerable engineering difficulties, the line proved popular; tourists would ride in open-sided cars beholding the river's sublime power. A tourist rail line along the Canadian rim was constructed in 1892, and the two companies were combined in 1902 resulting in the circular route show here.

But the gorge’s geology, namely a type of shale prone to erosion and rockfall, eventually doomed the railroad. There were fatal tourist accidents in 1907, 1915, and 1917; landslides destroyed portions of the rail lines and rendered it unprofitable. This brochure was somewhat of a last-ditch effort; the company dissolved in 1935, but traces of its gorge railway still are visible today (Kaushik).

Nearly from the moment of Europeans first beholding Niagara Falls, the area has attracted all kinds of extreme behavior. Poets and artists tried to represent its sublimity. It became a destination for travelers, first on the Erie Canal and then by trains. Hotel impresarios raced to capitalize, promoting tightrope walkers across the gorge and sending derelict ferries over the falls loaded with animals. It was a popular honeymoon spot, perhaps following an analogy between overwhelming natural and sexual attraction. So in a way it makes perfect sense that modern tourism has followed this long tradition: jetboats, helicopter rides, casinos, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! curiosities. Over the falls and down there in the gorge, its mesmerizing whirlpools, the combined outflow of the Great Lakes exerts a powerful fascination.

From the Gazetteer: "Among the natural curiosities of this state, we must assign a foremost place to the far-famed Cataract of Niagara; a scene of greater magnitude and more real sublimity, than exists in any other portion of the globe.... When we survey the connexion of many large lakes, which in magnitude might aspire to the name of sea, collecting the waters from an immense area, discharging their superfluous stores through a river of one to three miles in width:—we trace the progress of the collection from springs, rivulets, rivers, and view with wonder their discharge into vast inland seas of fresh-water; these disembogue in a mighty river rapidly hastening toward another lake—and as we trace its course, we catch the thunder of a water-fall at the distance of 10, 20, and even 30 miles. Arrived on the margin, we survey, but with indescribable emotion, the whole volume of this water, contracted to ¾ of a mile in width, tumbling over a perpendicular precipice of 150 feet into a deep chasm of its own formation, while the rocks on which we stand sensibly feel and tremulously vibrate to the enormous impulse.... Before the [iron] bridge was built, access to [Goat Island] was attended with great peril, and very few persons had attempted it. It was done by shooting down in boats from above, a strong rope being fastened to the shore, by which the boat in returning was swung back....When I passed through this country, on an inland tour to the Ohio, in the year 1797, I think there was but one house between Genesee river and the vicinity of Buffalo; and the vast prairies presented a grand subject of contemplation; in some places level and open, for many miles....Buffalo is rapidly increasing in population, and contains about 100 houses and stores" (Spafford 56, 87, 141; French 450). Major Tributaries: Tonawanda Creek, Cattaraugus Creek, Buffalo River. Major Lakes: Attica Reservoir, Lime Lake. Highest Point: Poverty Hill (2,326 ft). Area: 2,280 square miles in New York state.

1812: Niagara River, Niagara Frontier

The site of Fort Niagara at Lake Ontario always has been an important strategic location, including the War of 1812

English cannons overlooking the Niagara, like here at Vrooman's Battery, severely limited navigation upriver

Control of trade routes among the Great Lakes drove events during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812

The village of Buffalo, with just 100 settlers, was deemed important enough to be burned down by the British in 1813

Clara Jessup Moore, Two Sonnets on Niagara Falls (1875)

By the middle of the nineteenth century, Niagara Falls had become a destination for travelers—initially via the Erie Canal, then in larger numbers upon railroads. Prior to George Eastman's development of the Kodak camera in 1888, which made photography available to amateurs, much of a tourist's interaction with the Falls was contemplative. The two poems below are like many others of this period that meditated upon its sublime, even divine power. Clara Sophia (Jessup) Moore was born in Massachusetts, and these sonnets from her Miscellaneous Poems were part of a sequence titled "Records of a Summer Tours"—including additional poems on the Genesee and St. Lawrence Rivers.

Niagara Above the Cataract

River of banks and woods and waters green,
With all of beauty to attract the eye,
Why leaps my heart, as past thy shores we fly?
Art thou not quiet as an infant’s dream,
Pure as its thoughts, unruffled as its brow
When circled by its mother’s arms in sleep,
While o’er it she doth still her vigil keep?
Then wherefore leaps my heart so wildly now?
Hark to that roar, deep as the thunder’s tone,
And in the distance see the sun’s last ray
Falling on clouds of never-ceasing spray.
In its wild beatings is my heart alone?
Thou glidest on to meet that battling floods
Fearless as warrior to the field of blood !

Niagara Below the Cataract

Within a temple’s towering walls I stand —
A temple vast; the heaven is its dome.
No corniced crag was hewn by human hand,
Nor by it wrought the tracery of foam;
The inlaid floor of emerald and pearl
Heaves at the hidden organ’s thunderous peal,
While round and up the clouds of incense curl,
Shrouding the chancel where the billows kneel.
Ah! bow your heads. It is a fitting place
For solemn thought, for deep and earnest prayer;
For here the finger of our God I trace,
Beneath, above, around me, everywhere;
He hollowed out this grand and mighty nave,
And robed his altar with the ocean wave!

Frederick Edwin Church, Niagara (1857). One of the most famous American paintings of the 19th century, Church's view took the unusual step of adapting its aspect ratio to the width of Horseshoe Falls—a decision perhaps borrowed from historical paintings or traveling panoramas. At its debut in New York City, more than 100,000 spectators paid to see the painting during the exhibition's first two weeks, some viewers bringing binoculars to appreciate its fine detail. You can do so yourself by clicking this link to a larger image. What elements in Church's painting would you point to as creating an effect that is more than simply documentary? When you look at how the scene is composed, what things aren't there and why not?

Works Consulted

—French, J. H. Gazeteer of the State of New York. Ira J. Friedman, 1860.

—Kaushik (screen name). Amusing Planet. "The Niagara Gorge Railroad." Web.

—Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812; or, Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics and Traditions of the Last War for American Independence (Harper & Brothers, 1868).

—Spafford, Horatio Gates. A Gazetteer of the State of New York. H.C. Southwick, 1813.