This American Life - 101: Niagara

Broadcast on: 01 May 1998

In the 1830s the area around Niagara Falls was still mostly wilderness, where roads were just coming in, and already people were complaining about how commercialization was ruining Niagara Falls. Already there were cheesy attempts to make money off tourism, in 1827 promoters sent a ship full of animals over the falls. They'd advertise that it would be ferocious animals of the forest, panthers, wildcats, wolves. Instead, the cargo included a buffalo, two foxes, a raccoon, a dog, and fifteen geese. It didn't matter. Everybody made money. The town of Niagara Falls had barely been settled for two decades. This kind of exploitation of the falls has continued for nearly two centuries since then, and what's surprising about it really is how unsuccessful it's been. Power plants fell into the river, bridges collapsed, deals were struck that benefited no one. If the classic story of America is the story of people who started with nothing, pulled themselves up other bootstraps, made something of themselves. The story of Niagara Falls is the opposite story. Here they started with something, something big, something huge, but didn't build anything lasting from it. The modern history of Niagara Falls can be divided roughly into three phases. The schemers who came in trying to exploit the falls for tourism, how their dreams rose and fell. But that's not the story we're here to tell today. Then there were the schemers who came in trying to exploit the falls for industry. By the 20th century, they bought hydroelectric power plants and factories that used that power, that cheap power, moved in. But then those factories left, decimated by the same economic forces that ravaged the industries in most of the Rust Belt states. Forces so powerful they can destroy a town, even a town with one of the world's natural wonders in it. But that's not the story we're here to tell today either. We're here to tell the story of the third phase of Niagara's life, the people who live in the aftermath of those dreams that have been dreamt and lost. You're living present-day Niagara Falls, a city like many cities around the country. Blessed at some point with natural advantages and resources, that somehow fell from grace, fell apart. A town full of people trying to make sense of what's happened, living in the aftermath of what's happened. Some have made their peace with what Niagara is, some who haven't. During the next half hour, we're going to bring you two sets of stories, interlaced. Half of them from Dr. Mentor produced a released Spiegel who went to the falls and interviewed people living there. Half of them David Kadeski, who grew up in the town of Niagara Falls. It's his American life from W.B.E.C. Chicago, the public radio international, at my right class. Stay with us. All the stories of these hours will be from Elise and David. We'll start with this one, from Elise. There's a painting of Niagara above the couch in Paul's living room, and another on the

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