Niagara Falls Drained in 1969 Exposing Disturbing Findings

The year was 1969 and over the course of several months, a team of innovative engineers completed, what seemed at the time, a Herculean task. For the first time in 12,000 years, the water that rushes over the majestic Niagara Falls was reduced to what looked like just a trickle.

People mistakenly believe that Niagara Falls is just one big waterfall. That’s not the case. Niagara Falls actually consists of three waterfalls, two on the American side and one on the Canadian side.

The rock pile is called a talus and it’s at the base of American Falls. Concerns began to mount that more rockslides could completely erode the waterfalls. To study the falls’ geological composition and forestall or postpone their ultimate potential destruction, drastic measures had to be taken.

A joint commission of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Canadian officials made the decision to dewater Niagara Falls for five months to give scientists and engineers time to figure out what was going on and take whatever action was needed.

The wonderful and incredible story of Niagara Falls started more than 18,000 years ago. Advancing ice sheets apparently carved out huge swathes into the landscape that would eventually become what we now know as North America.

It was at the early dawn of the 17th century that a French explorer named Samuel de Champlain first heard rumors of a huge waterfall in the area. However, Niagara Falls was first officially recorded in 1678 by Europeans when a priest named Father Louis Hennepin first saw the majestic Niagara Falls.

Experts believe that Niagara Falls are named after a word from the Iroquois Indian language, “Onguiaahra.” This word means “the strait,” and most people believe this is where the name comes from.

When the railroad expanded in the 1800s, more and more people began to visit Niagara Falls as a tourist destination. Before long, people who lived in the area saw business opportunities here. A wide variety of different amenities were developed to cater to all of these visitors.

By the end of the 1800s, industrialists realized that there was incredible value in the water that tumbles over the falls every minute of every day. These industrialists could harness the force of nature to power their mills and factories.

The famous inventor Nikola Tesla was involved in a lot of great things that he didn’t get credit for at the time. Many people don’t realize that he actually consulted with engineers on the electrical issues at Niagara Falls. Tesla’s alternating current induction motor made history, and his experiments at Niagara were historic, too.

Divided between the United States and Canada, the two countries host about 30 million tourists annually. When the falls are flowing at their peak, visitors can see water tumbling down at the rate of about six million cubic feet every minute.

In the record-breaking freeze of 2019, Niagara Falls froze because of the unusually cold temperatures. However, in reality, the falls only froze in certain places. Some water was still able to make it over the cataract’s edge.

In 1965, residents of Niagara Falls, New York began to be worried that the falls were losing their charm. It was because of the growing talus deposit, which as we have already mentioned, is the rocks that accumulates at the bottom of the waterfall.

An article that appeared on the cover of the Niagara Falls Gazette on January 31, 1965, addressed these concerns. A journalist named Cliff Spieler argued that because of persistent erosion, the American Falls may eventually be eradicated completely. Was he wrong or right?

Hoping to come to a resolution, Canadian and American authorities consulted with the International Joint Commission (IJC), which oversees regulations as they pertain to waters that are shared between the two countries. The experts got busy trying to find a solution.

On November 13, 1966, an ingenious plan was put firmly into action. The International Water Control Dam upriver was pushed into massive overdrive. The dam’s gates were wrenched wide open, allowing the current in. Meanwhile, the hydro-generating stations were upped at the same time until they were at complete capacity.

This allowed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials to get a closer look at the exposed riverbed. The USACE team was eager to come up with a long-term plan for protecting American Falls and they took a lot of aerial photos of the scene below.

Two years after diverting the water temporarily, the IJC started the American Falls International Board. Before long, the board knew that they needed to come up with an even more ambitious approach to save American Falls. They knew that to solve the big problem of erosion, they would have to find a way to completely de-water the falls.

Because the earlier exercise was only able to reduce the water flow over American Falls to 25%, something more drastic was needed to find a permanent solution. Consequently, officials and engineers drew up plans for a cofferdam, which is a temporary structure.

The USACE awarded a half-million-dollar contract to a company called Albert Elia Construction Company to handle the cofferdam. That’s about $4 million if you handed out such a contract in today’s money. However, the company didn’t just have to dry out Niagara Falls, as it turns out.

The workers for the company started on June 9, 1969. However, they quickly found themselves in a somewhat precarious situation. One concern was that if someone fell in the water, there would be nothing to keep them from plunging over the enormous edge of American Falls.

The idea behind the lifeline between the mainland and Goat Island was more of a precaution of just in case someone fell into the water. If that were to happen, they would have something to grab before they were pushed over the edge of the falls.

To get started, it took three days and more than 1,200 trucks to make it all happen. Collectively, the trucks dumped almost 28,000 tons of fill rocks and earth into one of the cofferdams that were upstream of Niagara Falls.

It was June 12, 1969, that workers plugged up the cofferdam’s final breach. The dam stretched all the way from Goat Island to the mainland and successfully accomplished what was previously seen as an impossible task. The ingenuity of engineering was able to silence one of the biggest waterfalls in the world.

For the first time in thousands of years, the mighty Niagara Falls was dry, and the engineers could begin their investigation. The researchers planted instruments in several locations so that they could monitor rock movements.

While many locals feared that the local economy would be affected because the falls were running dry, still others believed that many people would come to see what was beneath the water. Did this event attract crowds? Yes, it did.

As you can imagine, an event of this size drew a huge crowd. For one thing, there were thousands of coins at the bottom of the falls. Presumably, people threw coins into this gigantic body of water over the years to make wishes.

Curious tourists began to arrive the day after the falls were successfully turned off. Reports say that some brave people took tentative steps onto the riverbed, and some still braver approached the edge of the waterfall. Imagine being able to walk where so few people have ever walked. Most people were just happy to see the amazing cofferdam.

Of course, the one thing that everyone assumed would be found at the base of the falls was dead bodies. In fact, you would assume that there would be countless people found dead underneath the water. As it turns out, they found the remains of two people, one man, and one woman.

The man’s body that was found in the riverbed had not been in there for long. The reason we know this is that the man was seen jumping into the channel above American Falls the day before the waters dried up.

The day after the falls dried up, police officers started scanning the riverbed to search for human remains. They found the man from the day before, but his name was not recorded. However, they also found something else, and it is very troubling.

Authorities wanted to get to the bottom of the woman’s identity, so they removed her remains and performed an autopsy. However, her identity has never been recorded, if they even discovered who she was. Perhaps new innovations in DNA technology will someday give this woman back her identity.

Since 1829, several daredevils have tried to survive the terrifying plunge over the fall, but only a few have actually succeeded in their attempt. The first person (and the most famous) was Annie Edson Taylor, a schoolteacher who was 63 years old. In 1901, Taylor plunged over the falls in a huge wooden barrel.

According to Wikipedia, more than 5,000 people have gone over the falls since 500 A.D. Many of these were intentional and were either suicide attempts or stunts. However, some people went over Niagara Falls accidentally, usually by being careless or risky.

Karel Soucek was a Canadian stuntman who survived his own trip over the falls in a barrel in 1984. After his plunge, Soucek had just minor injuries on his face that his wristwatch caused when it impacted with the water.

Another stuntman tried to tackle the cascades in 1990. His name was Jesse Sharp, and he was an American man. However, he was in a whitewater canoe, and he was never seen again. He had a dinner reservation in Lewiston, about four miles away. He never showed up.

The last reported person to survive going over the falls is an unnamed man. At 4:00 a.m. on July 8, 2019, police officers responded to reports of someone in crisis on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. When the officers arrived, the man climbed the protective retaining wall and jumped into the river.

Every person who has survived going over Niagara Falls has gone over Horseshoe Falls. No one has ever survived going over American Falls. After one daredevil died in 1951, it became illegal to stunt at Niagara Falls. Doing so can lead to fines as high as $25,000 U.S. dollars.

Seeing two bodies pulled out of the riverbed was a grim reminder of the power of the falls. However, the authorities simply took the bodies away as they were discovered. Then, they started the work of getting rid of the loose rocks that were on the waterfall’s face.

Workers began to drill into the riverbed at the top of the powerful American Falls. When the team reached the 180-foot point, the workers started to set up tests that would measure the absorbency levels that could be expected from the rocks.

They hoped that opening the new walkway would attract tourists when it opened on August 1, 1969, and it did to an extent, but it still wasn’t enough to get people coming as much as they were before. The fact is, people go to Niagara Falls to see the water.

When the workers started on the deposit of talus, they hoped that they could do a good clean-up operation. However, it quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t be as easy as they had hoped. Specifically, the engineers studying the falls decided that the talus played a huge role in supporting the cliff’s face.

The engineers knew that they needed a permanent dam that would boost water levels in the basin, thereby submerging the rocks that were concerning everyone. However, creating a dam wasn’t a permanent solution because it risked weakening American Falls.

While they had the American Falls dry, the engineers put the time to good use. In total, they ended up spending about six months working with bolts, anchors, and cables that all helped to stabilize the beautiful American Falls.

Finally, in November 1969, the work on American Falls was completed. The engineers used dynamite to destroy the cofferdam and the falls were returned to their former majestic glory. However, the IJC knew that it had taken significant steps toward protecting the beautiful natural wonder instead of making it something that was artificial.

Because so many businesses depended on the power of the falls, it took a toll on the beauty of the place. However, they simply relocated further downstream. By the beginning of the 1900s, much of the water from the falls was being redirected to power several businesses, and this convinced some people that the cascades’ natural beauty was diminishing.

The business owners felt that they were helping to conserve Niagara Falls by limiting how much water was pouring over the falls’ lip every day. They believed that the decreased water flow was helping to prevent the erosion of the cascades.

The innovative solution that they came up with was to divert about 75% of the water from Niagara Falls in the winter and in the evenings. Niagara Falls has fewer visitors in the evenings and in the cold winter, so this made sense.

Although stunts have been made illegal at Niagara Falls, a tightrope walker named Nikolas Wallenda got permission from both Canada and the U.S. to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope on June 15, 2012.

Although it’s one of the world’s most beloved natural wonders, it’s impossible to know how long human beings have been aware of the falls. There aren’t any written records of people seeing the falls, but undoubtedly, indigenous people first marveled at the wonder of their beauty.

On that fateful day in 1848, the falls were dry for between 30 and 40 hours. By then, Niagara Falls was already a huge tourist attraction, so much so that villages had sprung up to accommodate people who traveled to witness the falls.

Porter noticed something he had never heard before: the sound of silence. He could no longer hear the water running. When he went to the edge of the river, he was astonished to see that there was hardly any water running.

It didn’t just affect the humans who were inconvenienced. The riverbed was completely exposed, and fish died. Turtles also floundered around, not knowing what to do. Some brave and foolish people even walked on the river bottom to pick up exposed tomahawks, bayonets, and guns that revealed themselves.

As it turns out, the falls didn’t stop because of divine retribution. However, people had no way of knowing that. Eventually, word arrived from Buffalo that the dry riverbed and bare falls were caused by huge chunks of ice that blocked Lake Erie’s outlet into the Niagara River head.

One gentleman ran a sightseeing boat called Maid of the Mist, and he had a problem with dangerous rocks that he was always required to avoid. While the river was dry, he decided to get some safety work done.

Sometime in the next few years, New York will be turning off American Falls again. This needs to happen so that engineers can get rid of the two bridges that are 115 years old. These bridges have exceeded their lifespan and have to be replaced.

The state of New York is considering three options as permanent replacements: steel girder bridges that are more linear and simpler, arched designs made of precast concrete that will resemble the current bridges, and tired arch bridges that have vertical cables that support the surface from above.

When they turned off Niagara Falls in 1969, they mostly found lots of coins and two dead bodies. But what would they find in the 21st century with a project like this? It would likely be a sort of time capsule of the last 60 years.

Unfortunately, scientists believe that Niagara Falls may someday disappear. Niagara Falls will probably disappear into Lake Erie when it happens. The estimate is based on the movement of Niagara Falls over the last 12,000 years. Over time, the falls erode because water wears the softer rock away at the cliff’s base.