Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Niagara Falls Dewatered

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

In 1969, the Army Corps of Engineers turned off one of the main waterfalls at Niagara Falls to see what could be done to preserve it. They found two corpses, one carcass and lots of pennies. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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How you doing? I'm doing good, man. I'm pretty excited about this one. Have you ever been to Niagara Falls? I have. What's it like? A watery damp. It's very pretty.

It's actually really neat. It's definitely worth seeing. Which falls did you see? We went on the American side, but then when we got to the Canadian side, we stopped and turned around and looked again, but it's really definitely a sight to see for sure. Yeah, I mean, I guess we should point that out for people like me who have never been to Niagara Falls, that there are a few falls. If you're American and you don't want to leave the country, you can see the American side.

If you want to see something that to my eye on images online looks better, the Canadian horseshoe falls are pretty nice. They're better, right? I don't want to say better because I'm an American, but they are much larger. There's a much larger volume of water. It's much more graceful. And they're separated by a goat island, and then there's cute little bridal veil fall separated from the American fall by Luna Island.

Yeah. So there's technically three falls with Niagara Falls. And what's surprising to me, Chuck, is in researching this, like that setup where you've got the American Falls, bridal veil falls, and then the horseshoe falls on the Canadian side, that's only like 500 to 800 years old. Yeah. But I believe that, I don't know why. That sounds reasonable to me.

Okay. Well, that's like, I can't keep my socks on every time I hear that. Oh, really? Yeah. Because you think of something like a geological feature, like a waterfall, it's got to be ancient, right? But the idea that it's only been that way for 500 to 800 years is kind of surprising. Until, of course, then you look into a little further and you see, oh, well, this waterfall

is just eroding the earth beneath it so quick that, yeah, it's, of course, it's not always been this way. It just totally makes sense. Yeah. And that erosion, you know, the bottom of the falls is pretty intimidating. It's very rocky and jagged, big boulders. That's why going over a barrel, we did a podcast, I guess if you want to call it that, many, many years ago in our early days, about going over the falls in a barrel, then it's incredibly

dangerous. Yeah, it is very dangerous. And those rocks, though, haven't always been there. There were two rock falls in the 1930s and the 1950s, specifically under the American Falls, and that left a lot of boulders underneath. And some people said, well, that is just unsightly. And frankly, it's probably not very patriotic to let the Canadians best us with their much more beautiful waterfall now.

So we've got to figure out what to do about this because we can't just let the American Falls go away. That's right. And who do you call when you need something like this done? You know that. So the Army Corps of Engineers, and they said, well, really the only way to find out what's going on is to dry up this waterfall. And everyone at the table spit out their coffee and they said, you're crazy.

It's 1969. What are you talking about? And they said, you know, it's really not that hard. Yeah, it really isn't. So they hired a construction company and they built a cofferdam, which I believe we talked about in the Hoover Dam episode. It's just like a mound of earth that is holding water back that's not normally there. And they built that at the point like the fork where the American Falls began, and they

diverted the Niagara River, mostly over to the Horseshoe Falls, a little bit to the Bridal Falls. But then that was it. Like the water stopped flowing over the Niagara, American fall, and it virtually dried everything up. It would be easy if you think about it. I mean, it was a massive, huge project, but it wasn't technically that hard. Yeah.

It was close to 28,000 tons of fill. So that's a lot of dirt and rock. That's a lot of fills. That's a lot of fills. But when you think about the fact that Horseshoe Falls accounts for 90% of the dump anyway, like they couldn't dam up Horseshoe Falls. There's no way, right? I don't believe so.

No, I don't think the American fall could take it. The other thing I wonder too is if when they did this, if you could tell a difference at Horseshoe Falls. Yes. I read that you could. Oh, really? Most decidedly. They said it looks 10% cooler.

Right. I'm 10% more inspired. I love it. Yeah. The rainbows around it were 10% brighter. It was just, you could really tell. Well, should we take a little break? Well, sure, man.

All right. Let's take a break and find out exactly what they did once they had these dry falls right after this. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for

her travel. But yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So again, Chuck, they dried up Niagara Falls because they wanted to figure out how to keep it from eroding and possibly how to clean it up, like clean up all those boulders that

tallows at the bottom from those rockfalls because they were worried about it looking ugg, basically. That's right. But here's the thing, and you should look up pictures of this if you're not driving your car because it's pretty remarkable. It really is. To see this thing dried up like that. I mean, it just looks like a really flat mountain, basically, like a cliff, which is what it is.

But they couldn't keep it all dry. That face, they had to keep wet because it had never been dried out and exposed to the sun and the wind, and they were rightfully worried about what might happen. So they had to keep spraying that face kind of continually from what, like June to November? Yeah. They installed a sprinkler system to do it. Oh, they didn't have just a bunch of people? Right.

To stand in their hoses. Like, this is the worst summer job of all time. That's right. But then they had to clean out the riverbed, so they sandblasted out a bunch of stuff and they got the moss off and they sprayed all these rocks clean and got all the loose gravel out of there. And they really wanted to see what was going on, you know, geologically. So they injected blue dye into the, they drilled down into the riverbed, injected blue dye,

and they were like, let's see what happens. Let's sit back and have a tea and see where this blue comes out. And then some of the more excited workmen among them would be like, oh, there it is. There it is. So when the blue dyes started to emerge and they'd clap and point and laugh. That's right. They also installed something called extensometers, which are pretty interesting. They're little...

Sounds so made up. It does. It also sounds like something a mad villain would use. But it measures the movement of the rock in the foundation or the bed or the riverbed of the American Falls to basically look out for any movement greater than one one-hundredth of an inch. Yeah. That's pretty specific.

Very specific. And they also installed little metal posts called monuments, which they can use in the future and have used in the future to survey the area and see if they've moved it all, if the riverbed has moved it all, in the hopes that they will be able to catch a rockfall from happening or erosion from happening before it happens. That's right. And they did find a place where they thought it was pretty susceptible in the future to occur.

It was a prospect point. This had already been a place where they had a rockfall in 1954, which is the one that kind of kick-started this whole plan to begin with. So prospect point is a problem, quite frankly. Yes. Although this was...1954 is the last time it happened and it hasn't happened since. No, it hasn't. And I think some people might be a little surprised because this is 1969 where they're

like, this is probably where it's going to happen next again and it just still hasn't. It was the summer of love. It was. That's so funny. Look, I have it written down here, the summer of love underneath there. Did you get that email? Yeah. Yeah.

Apparently what we've been saying, summer of love is anything but 1967 and that is officially the summer of love. I did not know that. So I always thought it was 68 for some reason. I always thought it was 69. All right. Well, in show correction, short stuff style. Yes.

So back to the dry bed, you would think, who would want to come see a dried up Niagara Falls? I would. It turns out a lot of people. Would you not? Well, I mean, I haven't been to, I would want to, I don't know if that would want that to be my first trip. Right. Right.

Or you would definitely want to go back a second time when it's in full swing for sure. Or maybe actually that would be the time to go because you could see that and horseshoe falls. Right. And get the best of both worlds. Yeah. So some people were thinking like that and thought like, this is amazing. There was one weekend in mid July where 90,000 people streamed through there.

To see, you know, because this is kind of a once in a lifetime thing to see Niagara Falls dried up or the American Falls at least. But overall that tourist season was pretty lame because a lot of people were like, well, I guess it's under construction. I'm not going to pay for that road trip to go see a lame-o fall. Yeah. And the original plan was there like, let's try this thing out and invite people out to walk around and do stuff.

They kind of were like it's a little too wet still and it's probably still kind of dangerous. So it was in August finally that they deemed it dry enough for people to go out safely. I think they never allowed people up on the cliff, did they? Well they built a fence on the brink. So I think I don't know how close to the brink they were allowed to be, but I get the impression that all throughout the summer, whether they were allowed out there or not, people would go run out on the riverbed and just like hang out. Oh yeah?

And then they would be chased off by the Army Corps. They'd be like, we might not have guns, but we have sextants. Another thing they did, and I just consider this very bad luck, people would go out and collect wish coins. Isn't that bad luck? I don't know. Those are people's wishes. We've seen the goonies.

Yeah, yeah, but the wishes have come and gone. I mean, come on. If they haven't been granted by now, they're not going to be granted. Let's give those coins another shot. I guess so. It just seems, I don't know. It doesn't seem right. That's like that one part in the Simpsons, the beer baron episode where they're driving

through the cemetery and Bart goes, dad, it's bad luck to run over gravestones and Homer goes, really? I heard good. That's good luck. One thing they did find, and it's kind of amazing they didn't find more dead bodies, but they did find two, one of them was a pretty recent one that they were actually looking for this guy. Yeah.

They saw this guy dive into the river about a week before, so they knew he would be in there. But what they didn't know is that they would find a very creepy find, a woman in a red striped dress who had been down there for a long time, it says lodged head first into the talus. Isn't that ghoulish? That's so ghoulish, and she had a gold ring inscribed with, forget me not. Yeah.

And then the irony of that is that she's never been identified. Yeah, that seems remarkable to me. It does, and man, I looked, I was like, I don't know how else to word this search, but I didn't find anything about that woman being identified ever. So I don't, and I'm also not sure that the guy who jumped the week before they turned the water off was ever identified as well. Oh, really? They didn't know who it was?

No. But they, yeah, he was mistaken for a worker by some people who saw him initially jump in and then they were like, oh, wait, that guy, that's not good. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, a lot of people are surprised that they didn't find more bodies because there's a lot of people who die by suicide or just do something dumb and go over the falls in a barrel or whatever. It's a well-known place to do that, and only two bodies is kind of strange.

Yeah, they found one deer, carcass, which that's kind of surprising. I just thought it would be littered with carcasses. I think that's kind of what they were half expecting too. That was probably a good, you know, they were delighted by that, I'm sure. They were. They were. Yeah. So by November, they were like, okay, we've figured out everything we can figure out.

We've kind of shorted it up as best we can. From what I read, the waterfall naturally eroded at like five feet a year, and now they've got it down to one because of the stuff they did in 1969 and later in 1972. But they said, okay, it's time to turn the water back on, and they did on, get this, November 25th, 1969, which I believe was 50 years and two days ago. Oh, wow. Isn't that neat? Happy anniversary.

Happy water day. Reintroduction of water to fall day. Yeah, and of course, they had to do it slowly throughout the course of a day. They couldn't just make some big, magnificent scene and say, watch this, everybody. I'm sure they wanted to, but hang on to your duffs. Yeah. I'm sure they did some math to figure out just kind of how slow they needed to go with it, but it was still probably pretty cool to see.

I'll bet it was for sure. And so what was kind of heartening to me is they said, okay, we learned a lot actually, and we can probably keep this thing from eroding, but should we? And this joint task force to kind of preserve Niagara Falls, but a joint commission between Canada and the US said, well, what are the residents around here think? So they sent out little mailers and asked like 200,000 residents in Canada and on the US side, what do you guys think we should do? And the majority of people said, hey, it's a natural formation.

Just leave it to nature. Leave it be. So they did. Yeah. I thought that was kind of neat. I liked that they asked locally too. Right. They asked locally.

And acted locally. Right, exactly. There you go. Got nothing else. Oh yeah, they were going to turn it off one more time in 2019 to fix some bridges. And I believe time has basically run out on that project, so it might happen in 2020. Let's cross our fingers. Maybe we can do a podcast live from the brink.

That's a really great idea, Chuck. Well, I guess that's the end of short stuff, Chuck, which means short stuff out. What you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. All podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.