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Characteristics

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The Horseshoe Falls drop about 57 metres (187 ft), while the height of the American Falls varies between 21 and 30 metres (69 and 98 ft) because of the presence of giant boulders at its base. The larger Horseshoe Falls are about 790 metres (2,590 ft) wide, while the American Falls are 320 metres (1,050 ft) wide. The distance between the American extremity of the Niagara Falls and the Canadian extremity is 3,409 feet (1,039 m). The peak flow over Horseshoe Falls was recorded at 6,400 cubic metres (230,000 cu ft) per second. The average annual flow rate is 2,400 cubic metres (85,000 cu ft) per second. Since the flow is a direct function of the Lake Erie water elevation, it typically peaks in late spring or early summer. During the summer months, at least 2,800 cubic metres (99,000 cu ft) per second of water traverses the falls, some 90% of which goes over the Horseshoe Falls, while the balance is diverted to hydroelectric facilities. This is accomplished by employing a weir – the Interna...
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Over the falls

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Jumps, plunges and walks edit In October 1829, Sam Patch, who called himself "the Yankee Leapster", jumped from a high tower into the gorge below the falls and survived; this began a long tradition of daredevils trying to go over the falls. Englishman Captain Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel, drowned in 1883 trying to swim the rapids downriver from the falls. On October 24, 1901, 63-year-old Michigan school teacher Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to go over the falls in a barrel as a publicity stunt; she survived, bleeding, but otherwise unharmed. Soon after exiting the barrel, she said, "No one ought ever do that again." Before Taylor's attempt, on October 19 her domestic cat named Iagara was sent over the Horseshoe Falls in her barrel to test its strength. Contrary to rumours at the time, the cat survived the plunge unharmed and later posed with Taylor in photographs. Since Taylor's historic ride, over a dozen people have...
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Geology

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The features that became Niagara Falls were created by the Wisconsin glaciation about 10,000 years ago. The retreat of the ice sheet left behind a large amount of meltwater (see Lake Algonquin, Lake Chicago, Glacial Lake Iroquois, and Champlain Sea) that filled up the basins that the glaciers had carved, thus creating the Great Lakes as we know them today. Scientists argue there is an old valley, St David's Buried Gorge, buried by glacial drift, at the approximate location of the present Welland Canal. When the ice melted, the upper Great Lakes emptied into the Niagara River, which followed the rearranged topography across the Niagara Escarpment. In time, the river cut a gorge through the north-facing cliff, or cuesta. Because of the interactions of three major rock formations, the rocky bed did not erode evenly. The top rock formation was composed of erosion-resistant limestone and dolomite of the Lockport Formation. That hard layer of stone eroded more slowly than the underlying ...
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