I once read a curious bit of trivia about Niagara: until the mid-1900s, erosion caused the falls to move downriver. To prevent the brink from shifting further, in 1969 the US Army Corps of Engineers built a temporary dam to divert the river (I assume they obtained permission from the Canadians). The water was made to flow instead through the Canadian side, leaving the rock walls and boulders beneath the American falls dry and exposed. The Corps mended faults along the dry riverbed to help stave off erosion; then they dynamited the dam and restored the flow. I found a home video on Youtube showing the dried-up Niagara falls and wished I could have been there to see the water rush back over the dry rock and plummet below:
Dry Niagara Falls, 1969 (Source: Wikipedia)
The water is long back, and today a near-perfect rainbow shoots across to the American side. For a brief moment I assume it's a manmade tourist attraction, a beam of technicolor glitz projected across the roiling water from some well-hidden light cannon.
Looming over the river is a cluster of high-rise hotels and casinos -- a mini Atlantic City overlooking the falls. It turns out that the government of Ontario is part-owner of several casinos and derives substantial income from gamblers' losses. On the American side of the falls, the Seneca Indians also operate a casino. The aesthetic on both sides is Las Vegas lite, that gaudy mix of glass, steel and flashing neon (the rainbow, I discover upon chasing its end, is the real deal).
Towns like this strike me as a curious inversion of the relationship between urbanization and tourism: whereas most cities are visited by tourists and gamblers, in some cases the cities themselves are the result of those visitors, and tailored to their interests. In this, Niagara isn't alone. Bugsy Malone helped fund Las Vegas casinos with mob money, and eventually the gamble paid off (bad pun, I know): the city is now one of the fastest expanding urban areas anywhere. I've read that the gaming industry everywhere on the continent has been suffering with the financial crisis (fewer bonuses to fritter away at the roulette tables, I guess), and I wonder what will happen to these gambling enclaves.
We take a walk alongside the river -- Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed New York's Central Park and Prospect parks, was deeply committed to preserving the area around the falls and helped to design the reserve around it -- and it occurs to me that here in Niagara the casinos are perhaps not as misplaced as I first assumed. The place is no stranger to risk-taking. The falls, after all, are home to some of the most brave (hare-brained) stunts the world has ever seen, with a dozen or so people stuffing themselves into barrels and hurtling over the brink just to prove a point (not so sure what the point actually was, but apparently it was proven), or tightrope walking across the river because -- because they could, I suppose. I tend to group these quaint (if fatal) stunts with the bravado of the 20s and 30s -- so maybe the local "urbanization through gambling" model is just another reincarnation of Niagara-style risk-taking.
Source: Niagara Falls Daredevils
Looming over the river is a cluster of high-rise hotels and casinos -- a mini Atlantic City overlooking the falls. It turns out that the government of Ontario is part-owner of several casinos and derives substantial income from gamblers' losses. On the American side of the falls, the Seneca Indians also operate a casino. The aesthetic on both sides is Las Vegas lite, that gaudy mix of glass, steel and flashing neon (the rainbow, I discover upon chasing its end, is the real deal).
Towns like this strike me as a curious inversion of the relationship between urbanization and tourism: whereas most cities are visited by tourists and gamblers, in some cases the cities themselves are the result of those visitors, and tailored to their interests. In this, Niagara isn't alone. Bugsy Malone helped fund Las Vegas casinos with mob money, and eventually the gamble paid off (bad pun, I know): the city is now one of the fastest expanding urban areas anywhere. I've read that the gaming industry everywhere on the continent has been suffering with the financial crisis (fewer bonuses to fritter away at the roulette tables, I guess), and I wonder what will happen to these gambling enclaves.
We take a walk alongside the river -- Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed New York's Central Park and Prospect parks, was deeply committed to preserving the area around the falls and helped to design the reserve around it -- and it occurs to me that here in Niagara the casinos are perhaps not as misplaced as I first assumed. The place is no stranger to risk-taking. The falls, after all, are home to some of the most brave (hare-brained) stunts the world has ever seen, with a dozen or so people stuffing themselves into barrels and hurtling over the brink just to prove a point (not so sure what the point actually was, but apparently it was proven), or tightrope walking across the river because -- because they could, I suppose. I tend to group these quaint (if fatal) stunts with the bravado of the 20s and 30s -- so maybe the local "urbanization through gambling" model is just another reincarnation of Niagara-style risk-taking.
Source: Niagara Falls Daredevils
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