"Every American bride is taken here," reported Oscar Wilde after visiting Niagara Falls in 1882. "This waterfall," he added, "must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest disappointments in American married life."
Wilde was more wry than right.* Niagara may rank 83rd on the list of the world's 100 highest cataracts, but only two (Guaira Falls on the Brazil-Paraguay border, and Khone Falls in Laos) cascade vaster quantities of water. Since the area's first hotel opened on the Canadian side of the Niagara River 148 years ago, the falls have proved one of the most visited, derided and durable attractions in North America. A record 16 million tourists are expected to visit Niagara Falls in 1965. And despite all the quips by wags from Mencken to Mort Sahl, it still draws some 32,000 newlyweds a year, mostly to Niagara Falls, Ont., which indefatigably calls itself the Honeymoon Capital of the World and has the added lure, for U.S. citizens, of being in a "foreign country." Mused one recent visitor: "I guess it's camp. So Out it's In."
Congealed Spray. After the War of 1812, the falls were fashionable. Southern gentry traveled up to see the battlefield of Lundy's Lane and to summer by the mint-cool falls. But the era was short-lived. After the Erie Canal was completed in 1827, Niagara Falls became the first frontier town on the way West. By the time the New York Central came in 1858, it was one of the rip-roaringest burgs in the U.S. Floozies and fakes, barkers and con men made the Niagara the rube's Rubicon. "Indian chiefs"—chiefly from Ireland—plied a brisk trade in white pebbles, which they hawked as "congealed Niagara spray." The cries of "hackmen, photographers and vendors of gimcracks," wrote a horrified Henry James, "at times drown out the thunder of the cataract."
Ironically, the resort's reputation was redeemed by one of the world's great artists. In 1859, when France's Blondin started strolling the 1,300 ft. from the U.S. to the Canadian side of the gorge on a 2-in.-thick tightrope, rubbernecks flocked across the continent to gawk. For two summers, while spectators placed bets on his fate (and sometimes cut his supporting cables to improve the odds), the dapper Frenchman sashayed back and forth on his rope, drinking champagne (he once cooked an omelet 150 ft. above the falls), turning somersaults, pushing a wheelbarrow while riding a bicycle, even carrying his manager across on his back. Once Blondin stumped across on stilts, a display of bravado that won him $400 from the future King Edward VII.
Others followed in his wake. One, an Italian daredevil named Signor Ballini, splashed into the rapids and the headlines from a tightrope 160 ft. above the water. And there were barrels. Though countless daredevils pitted their fate against rapids and whirlpool, it was only in 1901 that anyone dared barrel over the waterfall itself. Anna Edson Taylor, a middle-aged widow from Michigan, survived the venture, but three of six others who later tried the stunt died in the attempt.