The Day They Shut The Water Off

Back when I was in college I supported myself with a great part-time and summer job; bus driving.  In fact I actually drove bus for two companies, Greyhound and Grand Island Transit.  And since I was driving from Buffalo, New York, one of my frequent charter destinations was nearby Niagara Falls.

At some point during the trip around the falls I would tell the people on the bus that they were lucky to be there during the day, “…because they shut the water off at night.”  That usually got a big laugh, but then I would go on to explain that it was true.

Unknown to most people, after sunset the water intakes upriver from the falls are opened and about 40-percent of the water is diverted to the Robert Moses Power Station on the American side and the Sir Adam Beck Station on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. Of course, the decrease is hardly noticeable at night, even with the colored lights on.

However, there was a time when the water was intentionally shut off to the American Falls, the northernmost one and Bridal Falls, the small one near Goat Island. (And you thought there were only two waterfalls at Niagara)

From June to November in 1969 the American Falls were dewatered.  That is, there was a coffer dam built upstream from the shoreline to the upper end of Goat Island which kept all but a trickle of water from flowing over the brink.  The diverted water was shunted over the Horseshoe Falls or through those huge water intakes to the power plants.

The US and Canadian power companies and the US Army Corps of Engineers performed a joint operation to examine the riverbed rock formation.  There was talk of possibly removing some of the rock fall at the base of the American Falls, but that proved too expensive so it never happened.  The project did help to prevent some erosion of the falls, however, so it was worth the money and the effort.

During that five-month time span, the company I worked for, American Airlines, had a promotional gimmick to obtain new passengers that I took part in.  One Saturday we had a 727 aircraft and crew assigned to fly flightseeing flights up to Niagara Falls at a height of only a few thousand feet.  Believe it or not, tickets for the flights cost $5.00 and the round trip was about 30 minutes.

Of course we sold out all six flights, but I got on one of them.  What an experience! Not only did I get to see the falls from the air, but I saw them when the American Falls was dry. 

Somewhere, buried in some packing boxes, there are some 35mm slides that I took while on that historic flight, but I haven’t seen them in years, and have no idea where they are anymore.  However, that doesn’t mean that you cannot see what the falls looked like in its dewatered state.  Here are some pictures I borrowed from the linked article, which you are encouraged to read when you finish this column.

 The engineers could walk across the brink almost without getting their feet wet.

 Note the small fall of water in the center.  The rock could not be allowed to completely dry or it would have caused further cracking and splitting of the riverbed.

The fallen rock is not very far below the brink, but clearing it would have probably caused more of the cliff face to fall. It was left intact as it remains today.

The last picture is what the American Falls looked like the following summer.  It still looks similar today, though some erosion has occurred in the 43 years since the project.