Niagara Falls: The Not-So-Great Tourist Destination

The Spectacles at Niagara Falls

Burning Spring Promoters corked a gas vent near the falls For a fee, tourists could see it lit creating a “burning spring.”

Stunts: Sam Patch Jumps into the Falls Beginning in 1829, Sam Patch had jumped into the falls. Became known as the “Yankee Leaper.” Highest jump was 130 feet… he survived!

Stunts: Blondin Crosses the Falls on a Tightrope Tourists would pay a fee to watch Blondin walk across the top of the falls. His show became more and more daring…

Blondin Crosses the Falls Pushing a Wheelbarrow on a Tightrope Blondin crossing the tightrope with a loaded wheel barrow. Sometimes wore stilts crossing the rope. Once pushed a cook stove onto the rope and made an omelet!

America’s Cultural Heritage “Americans [in the late 19th-century] feel that the United States is somehow inferior to Europe. Where the United States doesn’t have the ruins of Rome or Greece, it doesn’t have the Acropolis, it doesn’t have the Parthenon. And so it seems like we’re an inferior nation. And yet the one thing we do have is a nature that looks closer to the new morning of God’s own creation, closer to Paradise than anything that Europe has to offer. And so the thought is that if we’re to preserve anything that stands for the glory of America, then these overwhelmingly beautiful, sacred spots are the ones we ought to preserve.” --Historian William Cronon