page_title: Niagara Falls
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Niagara Falls / History
caption_attribution_description: 15-23-0882: rainbow bridge from observation deck
context_page_description: Niagara Falls is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Falls, also known as Canadian Falls, which straddles the international border of the two countries. The smaller American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls lie within the United States. Bridal Veil Falls are separated from Horseshoe Falls by Goat Island and from American Falls by Luna Island, with both islands situated in New York.
  Located on the Niagara River, which drains Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, the combined falls have the highest flow rate of any waterfall in North America that has a vertical drop of more than 50 metres. During peak daytime tourist hours, more than 168,000 m³ of water goes over the crest of the falls every minute. Horseshoe Falls is the most powerful waterfall in North America, as measured by flow rate.
  The falls are 27 kilometres north-northwest of Buffalo, New York, and 121 kilometres south-southeast of Toronto, between the twin cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and Niagara Falls, New York.
context_section_description: Theories differ as to the origin of the name of the falls. According to Iroquoian scholar Bruce Trigger, Niagara is derived from the name given to a branch of the local native Neutral Confederacy, who are described as being called the Niagagarega people on several late-17th-century French maps of the area. According to George R. Stewart, it comes from the name of an Iroquois town called Onguiaahra, meaning "point of land cut in two".
  Henry Schoolcraft reported:
  Niagara Falls. This name is Mohawk. It means, according to Mrs. Kerr, the neck; the term being first applied to the portage or neck of land, between lakes Erie and Ontario. By referring to Mr. Elliott's vocabulary, (chapter xi) it will be seen that the human neck, that is, according to the concrete vocabulary, his neck, is onyara. Red Jacket pronounced the word Niagara to me, in the spring of 1820, as if written O-ne-au-ga-rah.
  Many figures have been suggested as first circulating a European eyewitness description of Niagara Falls. The Frenchman Samuel de Champlain visited the area as early as 1604 during his exploration of Canada, and members of his party reported to him the spectacular waterfalls, which he described in his journals. The Finnish-Swedish naturalist Pehr Kalm explored the area in the early 18th century and is credited with the first scientific description of the falls. The consensus honoree for the first description is the Belgian missionary Louis Hennepin, who observed and described the falls in 1677, earlier than Kalm, after traveling with the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, thus bringing the falls to the attention of Europeans. Further complicating matters, there is credible evidence the French Jesuit missionary Paul Ragueneau visited the falls some 35 years before Hennepin's visit while working among the Huron First Nation in Canada. Jean de Brébeuf also may have visited the falls, while spending time with the Neutral Nation.
  In 1762, Captain Thomas Davies, a British Army officer and artist, surveyed the area and painted the watercolor, An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara, the first eyewitness painting of the falls.
  During the 19th century, tourism became popular, and by mid-century, it was the area's main industry. Theodosia Burr Alston (daughter of Vice President Aaron Burr) and her husband Joseph Alston were the first recorded couple to honeymoon there in 1801. Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jérôme visited with his bride in the early 19th century.
  In 1825, British explorer John Franklin visited the falls while passing through New York en route to Cumberland House as part of his second Arctic expedition, calling them "so justly celebrated as the first in the world for grandeur".
  In March 1848, an ice blockage caused the falls to stop; no water (or at best a trickle) fell for as much as 40 hours. Waterwheels stopped, and mills and factories shut down for having no power.
  Later that year, demand for passage over the Niagara River led to the building of a footbridge and then Charles Ellet's Niagara Suspension Bridge. This was supplanted by German-born John Augustus Roebling's Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge in 1855. After the American Civil War, the New York Central Railroad publicized Niagara Falls as a focus of pleasure and honeymoon visits. With increased railroad traffic, in 1886, Leffert Buck replaced Roebling's wood and stone bridge with the predominantly steel bridge that still carries trains over the Niagara River today. The first steel archway bridge near the falls was completed in 1897. Known today as the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, it carries passenger vehicles and trains between Canada (through Canadian Customs Border Control) and the U.S.A. just downstream of the falls.
  In about 1840, the English industrial chemist Hugh Lee Pattinson traveled to Canada, stopping at the Niagara Falls long enough to make the earliest known photograph of the falls, a daguerreotype in the collection of Newcastle University. It was once believed that the small figure standing silhouetted with a top hat was added by an engraver work
caption: The Rainbow Bridge, the first bridge after the falls, spans the Niagara Gorge.
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