They Stopped Niagara Falls

I was there when it was dry. Got a picture of me standing in front of it. They found an old Indian canoe at the bottom of the dry bed. Pretty awesome. Higher and deeper than I thought it would have been and tons of crushed rock and broken boulders. Would definitely hurt if you went over the falls in a barrel and you hit an outcropping of stone...

@sandyra

Yes, it certainly would hurt... if you survived the fall.

Ah Corps of engineers...Love to hear that you spent money and 6 months deciding if a waterfall-which is a naturally occurring formation-is stable. Hell, the things have been around for approximately 10,000 years, its about time those things fell apart!

Stupid stupid stupid.

On the other hand, cool photo.

@tubacca123 Mindless patriotism seems to have a lot to do with the decision. The concern was that the American Falls would quickly erode into mere rapids, thus leaving only the Horseshoe Falls - which are Canadian - as the only significant falls. Remember, it was 1969. The Vietnam War was still raging and Canada had just recently barred draft-age young men from crossing the border to avoid the draft.

To put their 'horror' into perspective geologically, the Niagara River had many ancient rapid erosion events (The river eating up hundreds or thousands of feet of river bed in days or weeks. If you ever go there, you'll see how that can be possible.)

I wonder where they put 6 months worth of water.

Looks cool as hell. I would have done it just to check it out. Glad they went back to letting it run though.

@archibot. I am hoping that was a rhetorical question.

They really did it just to collect all the pennies and other small coins at the bottom of the falls.

@grey- no it was not.

archibot, we assume that they diverted the water over to Horseshoe Falls.

Just to point out, I don't think any barrel-riders went over the Falls on the American side (at least, not any who lived), since they'd just be dashed on rocks. The Canadian side (the horseshoe) is much more barrel-rider-friendly.

And if I'm mentioning that, I have to mention this amazing account of the kid who went over the Canadian side in a lifejacket in 1960 and lived: http://edoerksen.blogspot.com/2010/07/miracle-of-niagara-falls-50-years-ago.html

Yes that does seem like the only possible explanattion, but nit knowing the layout of the falls I didn't know if even that was possible. But having looked at the google maps image it seems like it would be a relatively simple thing to do.

I also looked up the amount of water involved, 90% of the water flows over the horseshoe side, since they did this in the winter and since the difference between summer time peak volume and winter time low volume is so huge, diverting the American side water would be negligible.

@archibot: Actually, when I clicked the link I was hoping for an explanation of HOW they stopped the falls AND what they did with the water (redirect? how? to where?)

Guess I'll keep wondering.

Here is an interesting link that describes the whole thing, pulled from the archives of the Niagara Falls Review: http://www.niagarafrontier.com/dewater.html

It seems that diversion of the water flowing through the American channel wasn't terribly difficult.