Question: When was there a wire-walking craze at Niagara Falls?
About the article "Niagara Falls", section "Walks".

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Other daredevils have made crossing the gorge their goal, starting with the successful passage by Jean François "Blondin" Gravelet, who crossed Niagara Gorge in 1859.
Between 1859 and 1896 there was a wire-walking craze, and there were frequent feats over the river below the falls.
One inexperienced walker was able to slide down his safety rope.
Only one man fell to his death, at night and under mysterious circumstances, at the anchoring place for his wire.
These tightrope walkers drew huge crowds to witness their exploits.
Their wires ran across the gorge, near the current Rainbow Bridge, not over the waterfall itself.
Among the many was Ontario's William Hunt, who billed himself as "The Great Farini" and competed with Blondin in performing outrageous stunts over the gorge.
On three separate occasions Blondin carried his manager, Harry Colcord, on his back—on the final time being watched by the Prince of Wales.
In 1876 23-year-old Italian Maria Spelterini was the only woman ever to cross the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope, making four separate crossings over a period of 18 days.
On July 12 she crossed wearing peach baskets strapped to her feet, on July 19 blind-folded, on July 22 with her ankles and wrists manacled and finally on July 26.
Never performing again at Niagara, her personal life remains a mystery and the date and place of her death are unknown.
Tightrope crossings of the falls ended—by law—in 1896, when James Hardy crossed.
On June 15, 2012, high wire artist Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk across the falls in 116 years, after receiving special permission from both governments.
The full length of his tightrope was .
Wallenda crossed near the brink of the Horseshoe Falls, unlike previous walkers who had crossed farther downstream.
According to Wallenda, it was the longest unsupported tightrope walk in history.
He carried his passport on the trip and was required to present it upon arrival on the Canadian side of the falls.
The Michigan Central Railway Bridge is a steel arch bridge spanning the Niagara Gorge between Niagara Falls, Ontario and Niagara Falls, New York.
The bridge was designed by William Perry Taylor, Chief Engineer J.L.
Delming and consulting Norwegian-born engineer Olaf Hoff.
Construction on the bridge began in 1924, and the bridge opened in 1925.
This bridge replaced the Niagara Cantilever Bridge that crossed in the same area from 1883 to 1925.
The bridge is owned by Canadian Pacific Railway, which purchased the single track structure in 1990.
The bridge no longer carries train traffic as the tracks on the bridge and on the Canadian side have been removed.
The tracks leading to the bridge end at Robert Moses State Parkway remain in certain sections.
There is currently a wall across the centre of the bridge that is topped with barbed wire to prevent people from walking across it.
Additional barrier and barbed wire is located on the sides to prevent climbing on the steel arch sections.
A wired fence blocks the east side (American) and another wall on the west side (in Canada).
The Canadian corridor and bridge are owned by the City of Niagara Falls, Ontario and plans were to have had the bridge demolished by May 2012.
However, the bridge still stands today. 
Residents are zoned to the Niagara Falls City School District.
When LaSalle High School closed in June, 2000, a new Niagara Falls High School was built at 4455 Porter Road.
The new school merged LaSalle and the former Niagara Falls High School.
The old Niagara Falls High School building at Pine Avenue and Portage Road became an Art and Cultural Center.
Niagara University and Niagara County Community College are the two colleges in Niagara County. 
Nik Wallenda was born in Sarasota, Florida, on January 24, 1979, to Delilah Wallenda and Terry Troffer.
At age two, his parents bought him a swing set.
Before Troffer had even finished assembling it, Wallenda climbed up to the crossbar and did a somersault.
"And he did it perfectly," Troffer recalls.
"I didn't teach him that."
Around the same time, he began performing with his family in their circus act.
Wallenda's first public performance, dressed as a clown, was at SeaWorld San Diego in 1981.
He began to play on the wire at age two, walking back and forth while holding his mother's hand.
At age four, he starting walking the wire on his own, learning primarily from his father.
As a child, he would play on his parent's practice wire with his older sister Lijana, two feet (0.6 m) off the ground.
Wallenda's parents would throw objects at him as he practiced, and even shot him with a BB gun, to train him to deal with distractions.
At age six, he first visited Niagara Falls and immediately decided that one day he wanted to walk a tightrope across it.
He spent most of his youth on the road, living in a mobile home as his parents performed across America.
However, Wallenda says there was never any family pressure to become a circus performer.
As Wallenda grew, he transitioned from being a clown to juggling to a dog act.
In 1991, at age 12, he told a reporter he was not interested in becoming a high-wire artist when he grew up.
"It's just not worth it," he explained.
"We're risking our lives out there.
We could die."
Instead, he said, he dreamed of being a pilot.
Soon after, Wallenda made his professional tightrope walking debut at age 13.
When he graduated high school, his parents encouraged him to go to college and explore his options.
With live circus losing popularity, becoming a performer did not seem like a viable career path.
Delilah Wallenda wrote a book, "The Last of the Wallendas", convinced that the family legacy would end with her generation.
Wallenda briefly considered becoming a doctor, and was accepted into college.
However, his plans changed in 1998.
At age 19, he participated in a re-creation of Karl Wallenda's seven-person pyramid on the high-wire in Detroit, Michigan, alongside his father, mother, and other family members.
Afterwards, he decided to make a career of it.
"I knew then what I was born to do," he later said.
"We were on every TV show around the world and I said, 'if there is this much attention on what I do, then I need to carry on this legacy'".
He saw there was still interest in the Wallenda name.
"There was definitely a future" for the Wallendas, he later recalled.
"industry is not dying, it's just changing."
On March 1, 2009, the Niagara IceDogs hosted a home game at Niagara Falls Memorial Arena in nearby Niagara Falls, Ontario.
The arena, slated to close in 2010, was the former home to both the Niagara Falls Flyers and the Niagara Falls Thunder.
The game was billed as the last OHL game in the arena.
The announced crowd of 3,167 was the largest home crowd in franchise history.