Buffalo Paper - The Life-History of Niagara

The history of Niagara Falls, as currently told, is simple, and by that very simplicity it has been rendered plausible. AS the story runs, the Falls were once situated at Lewiston, 7 miles to the north of their present site; and, since all the rocks in this section are alternate hard and soft strata, the waters acting readily upon the soft shales caused their removal, and the overlying hard lagers, deprived of support, broke down under the weight of the large volume of water that rushed over them; and this erosive action has sent the edge of the fall more and more southward, until it now has excavated the seven-mile gorge between Lewiston and the village of Niagara Falls. (See Fig. 1.) As early as 1790" we find this theory advanced in a description of this region; and it has been practically endorsed by subsequent observers, the most prominent of whom was Prof. James Hall, the State Geologist of New York, who surveyed the Falls in 1841, and gave the most exact description of their surroundings in the publications of the State Survey.? Not until 1883 was the correctness of the accepted theory of the Falls questioned.‡ The geology of the basins of the Great. Lakes, as elucidated by Newberry,§ Speneer,ll and others, has added largely to a clearer understanding of the life-history of the Falls. The investigators have shown us that Lake Erie, as a lake, is, geologically speaking, quite young; that its valley was excavated in pre-glacial times by a series of rivers; and that the Maumee, Sandusky, Cuyaboga, Alleghany and other rivers carried the drainage of the surrounding