Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls is a group of three huge waterfalls on the border between the United States and Canada. The falls sit on the Niagara River, which flows between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The three waterfalls are called Horseshoe Falls, American Falls, and Bridal Veil Falls. Horseshoe Falls is the biggest of the three, and most of the water goes over it.

The falls are not the tallest in the world. At about 180 feet, Horseshoe Falls is shorter than many waterfalls in South America or Africa. What makes Niagara famous is how much water pours over it. On a busy summer day, more than 750,000 gallons of water rush over the edge every second. That is enough water to fill an Olympic swimming pool in less than a second.

Niagara Falls was born at the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. Huge sheets of ice melted and drained the Great Lakes toward the ocean. The water cut a channel through layers of soft and hard rock. Where the rock dropped off, the waterfall formed.

The falls are also moving. The rushing water slowly wears away the rock under the edge, a process called erosion. In past centuries, the falls moved upstream by as much as three feet a year. Today, engineers send some of the water through power plants instead of over the edge, which has slowed the erosion to about one foot every ten years. Even so, scientists think Niagara Falls will eventually wear all the way back to Lake Erie. That will take about 50,000 years.

People have been visiting the falls for a long time. The Haudenosaunee, also called the Iroquois, lived in the area for centuries before Europeans arrived. A French priest named Louis Hennepin wrote the first European description of the falls in 1678. By the 1800s, Niagara had become one of the most popular tourist spots in North America. Today, about 12 million people visit each year.

The falls have also attracted daredevils. In 1901, a schoolteacher named Annie Edson Taylor climbed into a padded wooden barrel and rode it over Horseshoe Falls. She was 63 years old, and she survived. Many others have tried since, and most have not been so lucky. Going over the falls is now against the law in both countries.

Niagara Falls also makes electricity for millions of homes. Power plants on both sides of the border use the falling water to spin giant turbines, turning the roar of the river into light.