Niagara River Overlook

Niagara Falls State Park emerged from a long contest between industrial use of the Niagara River and preservation of its scenery. As early as the mid-1700s, French settlers used the river to power a small sawmill, and after the American Revolution the riverbanks gradually filled with factories producing lumber, beer, paper, and flour. On Bath Island, now Green Island, in the 1820s, mill workers shared the area with tourists visiting a bathhouse, billiard house, and restaurant. After visiting in 1834, Scottish clergy Andrew Reed and Thomas Mattheson argued that Niagara should be preserved for all mankind, helping launch a debate over private and commercial use versus public appreciation. Poets and artists including Frederic Edwin Church emphasized the falls' sublime qualities, while landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. and Calvert Vaux joined a growing movement against the destruction of the scenery. That movement led to the establishment of the State Reservation at Niagara in 1885 as the oldest State Park in the United States. Olmsted and Vaux then prepared a restoration plan that, though only partly carried out, guided park development into the early 20th century. In the 1950s, the Robert Moses Parkway, American Rapids Bridge, and Observation Tower departed from that plan, and the parkway replaced the picturesque Riverway with a multi-lane expressway-style road. Even so, the park became a National Historic Landmark in 1963, and from the 1980s onward sections of the parkway were removed or reconfigured to restore the scenic harmony of Niagara Falls State Park. Olmsted later wrote that although the full face of the Falls could only be seen from the Canadian side, the New York reservation possessed a different beauty marked by refinement, delicacy, spray, mist, foliage, and shifting effects of light and water.

Niagara Falls, New York · United States