Quick Search
|
4500 Queen St. |
Ontario Tourism Region : Niagara Falls and Wine Country
Business Hours:
- Postcards above used with permission from A Great Lakes Treasury of Old Postcards 2007 Lorenzo Marcolin, MD 176 pp. For Copies call the Huronia Museum 705 526 2844 or email lmarcolin@aol.com
Description From Owner:
- Pop. 75,498. City in the Reg. Mun. of Niagara, on the Niagara R. and the QEW and Niagara Parkway and C. Rd. 20, 20 km SE of St. Catharines.
- The city is connected to Niagara Falls, NY by three bridges -- the Rainbow, Whirlpool Rapids, and Cantilever bridges.
- Father Louis Hennepin was the first white man to see Niagara Falls, and he told the world about it in grossly exaggerated reports published in Europe.
- (The Falls are 176 feet [53.64 m] high; Hennepin described their height as 600 feet [182.8 m.]) By the 1790s the region was fairly well populated but settlement was scattered.
- The first village in the area was Drummondville, formed in 1831 and named for Gen. Sir Gordon Drummond. The Village of Clifton was started by Capt. Ogden Creighton in 1832.
- Samuel Zimmerman built the first bridge across the Niagara Gorge in 1848 and founded the Village of Elgin in 1855. The post office, established in 1852, was called Suspension Bridge.
- In 1881 the post office name was changed to Niagara Falls. Niagara, the name assigned to the area, derives from a First Nations Peoples word Onghiara or Oniawgarah meaning ''thundering waters.'
- The thundering falls and cliff-lined Niagara Gorge have drawn daredevils to the place since 1828. That's when Sam Patch, Niagara's first stuntman, set up a 100-foot (30.4 m) tower near Goat I. above the Falls and made two jumps without injury.
- The crowds weren't generous when Patch passed the hat, so he took his act to the Genessee R in New York State and died on his first jump.
- In the late 1 850s, Frenchman Jean-Francrois Gravelet, billing himself as The Great Blondin, walked a tightrope across the gorge.
- When a mere walk no longer satisfied spectators, Blondin expanded his act to include somersaults, walking blindfolded, and riding a bicycle.
- He made the trip with his hands and feet manacled, cooked an omelette on his tightrope, and once lowered a rope to the Maid of the Mist, hauled upa bottle of cbampagne, and drank it.
- In 1901 Annie Taylor became the first person to go over the Falls in a barrel. She was unhurt. A decade later, Englishman Bobby Leach made the trip in an all-steel barrel.
- He was badly injured but after six months in hospitaI began wandering the world, capitalizing on his exploit.
- Fifteen years later, in New Zealand, he slipped on an orange peel and died of complications from a leg fracture. Eight people have survived plunging over the Falls in a variety of contraptions; the list of those who have perished is much longer.
- Two have survived going over the falls with no protective devices. Niagara Falls bills itself as The Honeymoon City and in 2001 claimed another sobriquet, Easter Egg Hunt Capital of the World.
- On April 14 an estimated 8,000 children competed against several hundred greedy adults to recover 254,000 Easter eggs hidden in Queen Victoria Park.
SkyMotion Video - Tourism Partnership of Niagara - For HLP +Partners - 2012 from SkyMotion Video on Vimeo.
Map Below gives Canadian Geographical Names
Natural Resources Canada in the Region of Niagara.
Natural Resources Canada in the Region of Niagara.
Address of this page: http://www.ruralroutes.com/niagarafalls