Some
controversy exists over which European
first gave a written, eyewitness description
of the Falls. The area was visited by
Samuel de Champlain as early as 1604.
Members of his party reported to him on
the spectacular waterfalls, which he wrote
of in his journals but may never have
actually visited. Some credit Finnish-Swedish
naturalist Pehr Kalm with the original
first-hand description, penned during
an expedition to the area early in the
18th century.3 Most historians however
agree that Father Louis Hennepin observed
and described the Falls much earlier,
in 1677, after traveling in the region
with explorer René Robert Cavelier,
Sieur de la Salle, thus bringing them
to the world's attention. Hennepin also
first described the Saint Anthony Falls
in Minnesota. His subsequently discredited
claim that he also traveled the Mississippi
River to the Gulf of Mexico cast some
doubt on the validity of his writings
and sketches of Niagara Falls. Hennepin
County in Minnesota was named after Father
Louis Hennepin.
During
the 19th century tourism became popular,
and was the area's main industry by mid-century.
Napoleon's brother visited with his bride
in the early 19th century. Demand for
passage over the Niagara River led in
1848 to the building of a footbridge and
then Charles Ellet's Niagara Suspension
Bridge. This was supplanted by German-American
John Augustus Roebling's Niagara Falls
Suspension Bridge in 1855. In 1886 Leffert
Buck replaced Roebling's wood and stone
bridge with the predominantly steel bridge
that still carries trains over the Niagara
River today. The first steel archway bridge
near the Falls was completed in 1897.
Known today as the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge,
it carries vehicles, trains, and pedestrians
between Canada and the U.S. just below
the Falls.
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