Ginger Strand, Inventing Niagara

“A brilliantly entertaining history of America's original natural wonder and its heedless boosters and failed visionaries.”

—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

“This is a deep and exhilarating book. Ginger Strand opens up a curiosity cabinet of wonders: two-legged dogs, radioactive end zones, shrunken heads, honeymoon suites, and one very powerful waterfall. This material could have been played for irony but Strand chose profundity instead, burrowing down through self-conscious layers of artifice until she arrives at a place both strange and vital.”

—David Gessner, author of Soaring with Fidel

“Strand reveals and sometimes laments Niagara's secrets—although with cogent humor and insight—making for a sometimes heartbreaking portrait of a ruined Eden. Inventing Niagara is not only an entertaining, enlightening blend of history, aesthetics, science and cultural commentary, it is Strand's important plea for our future.”

BookPage

Americans consider Niagara Falls a natural wonder, but the Falls aren't very natural anymore. Water diverted, riverbed reshaped, landscape redesigned, stabilized and flanked with cheap thrills, the Falls are more a monument to man's meddling than to nature's strength. Seamlessly weaving together science, history, aesthetics, and personal narrative, Inventing Niagara traces the path of America's best-loved natural wonder from sublime icon to engineering marvel to camp spectacle. Along the way, we discover a hidden history: the Mohawk chief who wrested the Falls from his adopted tribe, the revered town father who secretly assisted Niagara slavecatchers, the wartime workers who unknowingly helped build the Bomb, and the missing pharaoh who spent a century incognito at the Falls. With an uncanny ability to zero in on the buried truth, Ginger Strand introduces us to underwater dams, freaks of nature, graverobbers, mythical maidens, and 280,000 radioactive mice. A history of more than just the Falls, Inventing Niagara traces the course of natural wonder in America, illuminating what the Falls have to tell us about our history, our environment, and ourselves.

Note on the Niagara links from Ginger:
In the links above, I've assembled images and facts about Niagara Falls as both as a supplement to Inventing Niagara and as an introduction to Falls history for visitors or curious folks. In researching the book, I've come across a lot of fascinating material. I've also been consistently surprised at how much information out there—particularly on the Web—is misleading or wrong. I've gone back as much as possible to original sources for accuracy. However, I've undoubtedly been led astray at some point! If you find an error in these pages, and have a reliable bibliographic source to correct it, please send me an email (address on contact page) and I'll be happy to make the change.

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