The Niagara River

by Archer Butler Hulbert

Green Island Bridge.

The pavilion in the park was reserved for invited guests and for those who participated in the ceremonies. Near the Governor and his staff sat the Commissioners of the Niagara Park Reservation. Among the distinguished guests were prominent Canadians who took a warm interest in the project of an International Park at Niagara. They were Lieutenant-Governor Robinson, Captain Geddes, and Lieutenant-Colonel Gowski, members of the Niagara Park Association; the Hon. O. S. Hardy, Secretary of Ontario, and the Attorney-General of that Province, the Hon. O. Mowat.

The opening-prayer was offered by the Right-Reverend A. Cleveland Coxe. He was followed by Erastus Brooks, who, in a brief speech, introduced the subject of the day's celebration, and concluded by saying that no better investment had ever been made by any State, corporation, or people, and added that Lord Dufferin had promised that Canada would join in establishing a free park on their own side of the Falls. Great enthusiasm followed, and the whole audience of five thousand people then joined in singing America. President Dorsheimer, in behalf of the Commission, then formally presented the Park to the State of New York. After briefly reciting what the Commission had done he said: "From this hour Niagara is free. But not free alone; it shall be clothed with beauty again, and the blemishes which have been planted among these scenes will presently be removed. As soon as the forces of Nature, nowhere more powerful than at this favoured place, can do the work, these banks will be covered with trees, these slopes made verdant, and the Cataract once more clothed with the charms which Nature gave it."

As he concluded the firing of guns signalled to the crowds on the islands and on the Canadian side that Niagara was the possession of the State of New York, and that Governor Hill was about to accept the gift in the name of the people of the State. The Governor was warmly cheered when he stepped forward to speak. He gave a brief sketch of the history of the Falls, and likewise alluded to the opening of the Erie Canal, the laying of the corner-stone of the State's magnificent Capitol at Albany and the opening of the East River bridge. Then he accepted the Park with some appropriate words, concluding as follows: "The preservation of Niagara Park, the greatest of wonders is, indeed, a noble work. Its conception is worthy the advanced thought, the grand liberality, and the true spirit of the nineteenth century."

After this followed the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, the audience joining earnestly in the chorus. The oration was delivered by that polished member of the New York Bar, Mr. James C. Carter, giving a full history of the region. The two Canadian officials, Lieutenant-Governor Robinson and Attorney-General Mowat were then introduced, and congratulated the State of New York for the enterprise and public spirit shown by the people and the public officers. The exercise concluded with the Doxology and a benediction. In the afternoon Governor Hill with Generals Jewett and Rogers reviewed the militia. In the evening fireworks were set off from Prospect Park, Goat Island, and the brink of the Falls from the Canadian side. Earlier in the day the Comptroller's check for five hundred thousand dollars was received by the Porter family, the Goat Island property had been transferred to the commissioners, and Niagara was free.

There had been, of course, strong objection on the part of the army of landholders and monopolists who were to be thrown out of their "easy money" livelihoods. Of this the excellent "leader" in the New York Times of July 15th deals as follows:

It would be alike idle and unjust to blame the people of Niagara Falls for this state of mind. They have done what the members of any other community would have done in making the most of their neighbourhood as a wonder of nature. Even the obstinate . . . who declines to be bought out, and insists upon his right to make merchandise out of the river, is entitled to respect for the tenacity with which he proposes to resist the acquisition of his property by the State upon the ground that the law authorising the acquisition is unconstitutional.

He would very possibly be willing to acknowledge the right of eminent domain if it were proposed to take his land for a railroad, but the idea that it shall be taken in order that a river . . . shall be kept for dudes to look at undoubtedly strikes him as unmixed foolishness. However excusable this state of mind may have been, nobody who does not own a point of view or at least a hack at Niagara will dispute that its consequences have been deplorable. Though Niagara has continued to be a frequential resort it has by no means been as popular as it would have become with the increasing facilities of travel and the increasing advantages taken of them, if the fame of the gross and petty extortions had not been almost as widely spread as the fame of Niagara itself. While the local monopolies have deterred people from visiting the Falls, they have nevertheless been so lucrative that the most important of them is reported upon the authority of one of its managers to have returned a net annual profit, of thirty thousand dollars, and the report is not incredible, prodigious as the figure seems as a profit upon the mere command of a point of view. This hedging about and looking up of a boon of nature was perhaps the most objectionable incident of the private shore of Niagara. To a tourist who goes to Niagara from any other motive than that of saying that he had been there the importunity to which he had been subjected at every turn was absolutely destructive of the object of his visit. The prosaic and incongruous surroundings of the cataract completed the disillusion which importunity and extortion were calculated to produce. Many tourists would have been glad to pay down, once for all, as much as their persecutors could have reasonably hoped to extract from them for the privilege of being allowed to look without molestation upon the work of nature undisfigured by the handiwork of man. "For many years this has been impossible, and for several years it has been evident that it could be made possible only by the resumption on the part of the State, as a trustee of its citizens and for all mankind, of the ownership and control of the shore. This resumption will be formally made to-day. But it was really brought about in the Legislature in the winter of 1884, when the full force of the opposition to the project was brought out and fairly defeated. The State of New York has in effect decided that the preservation of a sublime work of nature under conditions which will enable it to affect men's minds most strongly is an object for which it is worth while to pay the money of the State. It is this emphatic decision which marks a real advance in civilisation over the state of mind of the Gradgrinds of the last generation and of the contemporaneous wood-pulp grinder that the proper function of the greatest waterfall in the world is to turn mill-wheels and produce pennies by being turned into a peep show."

The Reservation forms a beautiful State Park within the growing city of Niagara Falls, N. Y., which lies just back of it numbering now a population of nearly twenty-five thousand people. The city is well laid out, and its promoters "point with pride" to the advances made during the last decade and bespeak for "Industrial Niagara" a future of great distinction in the commercial world.