Niagara County Park on Oregon’s North Santiam River preserves the remains of an unfinished rubble masonry dam, the chief surviving evidence of an ambitious late-1890s plan to use the river’s power for a straw-paper mill. At this point the river once narrowed through a cleft only 4.25 feet wide, but construction troubles, floods, and erosion repeatedly damaged the work, and the project was abandoned by 1912 after about $100,000 had been spent. The name Niagara dates to 1890, when a townsite and post office were established. In the early twentieth century the settlement briefly served the area with businesses and dwellings before the post office closed in 1934.