Question: when was wire walking popular at Niagra Falls?
About the article "Niagara Falls", section "Walks".

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Russell Falls are located on the eastern boundary of Mount Field National Park, in Tasmania, Australia.
Accessible by a paved walking track, the falls are a popular tourist attraction.
They were first named the Brownings Falls after the original discoverer, c.1856, but were known as the Russell Falls after 1884, by which time they were already a popular tourist attraction.
The Falls Reserve was established to protect them in 1885.
In 1899 the Russell Falls were selected as one of eight images to be used on a set of pictorial postage stamps, aimed at promoting the then colony's growing tourist industry.
Russell Falls are located 100 metres downstream of Horseshoe Falls.
The horizontal rock strata over which the falls flow are Permian siltstone, and their more-resistant vertical faces consist of sandstone.
The surrounding plant life includes swamp gum and sassafras. 
In October 2013, a plaque was hung in the room that used to be A7, now in a bar called Niagra, marking the space's history. 
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."
Spider Bridge at Falls of Schuylkill was an iron-wire footbridge erected by ironmakers Josiah White and Erskine Hazard in 1816 over the Schuylkill River, north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Though a modest and temporary structure, it is thought to have been the first wire-cable suspension bridge in world history. 
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.