Long before Yosemite became a national park, before Congress had even settled on what a “state park” should look like, New York did something no state had ever done before: in 1885, it used the power of government to save a piece of jaw-dropping scenery purely because it was beautiful. That single decision created Niagara Falls State Park, the oldest state park in America, and quietly helped inspire an idea that would eventually protect the Grand Canyon, the Rockies, and thousands of acres in between.

But getting there took a fight. For decades, the land around one of the natural wonders of the world was fenced off, cluttered with mills, and hidden behind paid “viewing towers” where hucksters charged tourists a fee just to glimpse the Falls through a gap in the buildings. It took a famous landscape architect, a scrappy grassroots campaign, and one of the first uses of eminent domain for purely aesthetic reasons in U.S. history to tear it all down and give Niagara back to the public.

From Sacred Ground to Industrial Sprawl
Long before any of that drama, the land around the Falls was home to the Neutral Nation and other Indigenous peoples, who lived along the Niagara River for generations before European explorers ever laid eyes on it. The first European believed to have seen the Falls was a Belgian missionary in the 1600s, and not long after, the French explorer Robert de La Salle built Fort Conti near the mouth of the river. Word of the thundering wall of water spread fast, and by the early 1800s Niagara had become a bucket-list destination, eventually earning the nickname “America’s Honeymoon Capital” as newlyweds flocked from across the country.

That popularity had a dark side. As the 1800s wore on, industrialists realized the Niagara River was a natural power source, and mills and factories crept right up to the water’s edge. Entrepreneurs built shabby fences and towers around the best viewpoints, charging admission just to see what nature had made for free. By the time landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted — already famous for co-designing Central Park in New York City — visited in 1869, he was stunned. One of the greatest sights in the world had been boxed in by souvenir stands and turnstiles.

The “Free Niagara” Movement
Olmsted spent the next decade lobbying anyone who would listen, and by 1883 he had helped found the Niagara Falls Association, roughly 300 private citizens determined to pry the Falls out of private hands. The campaign, nicknamed the “Free Niagara” movement, leaned hard on the press to build public pressure, and it worked. On April 30, 1883, Governor Grover Cleveland signed a bill authorizing the state to acquire land around the Falls for a public reservation. Two years later, on July 15, 1885, Governor David B. Hill officially dedicated the land, and the Niagara Reservation — later renamed Niagara Falls State Park — became the first state park in the United States.

To pull it off, New York did something no state had done before: it used eminent domain not for a road or a railroad, but purely to preserve scenery. The state bought out roughly 412 acres, tore down more than 150 mills, factories, and tourist-trap towers, and handed the design of the new park back to Olmsted, working alongside his old Central Park partner, Calvert Vaux. Their plan, finished in 1887, was deliberately understated: scenic drives, quiet walking paths, and just enough shelter to let visitors experience the Falls with nothing man-made competing for attention.

A Blueprint for a Nation of Parks
The ripple effects were enormous. Niagara proved that a government could set aside land for beauty alone and that the public would show up in droves to enjoy it — a template that helped fuel the national park movement just a few decades later. Thomas Vincent Welch, who had pushed hard for the original legislation, became the park’s first superintendent and held the job for 18 years. Across the river, Canada followed suit almost immediately, creating the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park in 1888.

When Niagara Froze
As wild as it sounds, Niagara has come close to freezing solid more than once — though true, total freezing has only happened one time in recorded history. On March 29, 1848, a massive ice jam on Lake Erie choked off the Niagara River entirely, and both the American and Canadian Falls fell completely silent for about 30 hours. Locals reportedly walked out onto the dry riverbed, and some even went ice-skating and horseback riding where thundering water should have been. When the ice dam finally gave way, the river came roaring back to life.
Niagara has flirted with a repeat performance several times since — most memorably in 1911, 1932, and 1936, when the American Falls appeared almost completely encased in ice, and photographers captured some of the most striking images in the park’s history. But since 1964, a steel ice boom installed upstream on Lake Erie has kept large ice floes from ever again choking the river the way they did in 1848, so a true, total freeze of Niagara is one for the history books.

The Time They Turned Niagara Off
Even stranger than a frozen Niagara is a dry one — and it actually happened, on purpose, in 1969. Concerned about a growing pile of fallen rock at the base of the American Falls, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided the only way to study the problem properly was to stop the water altogether. Starting June 12, 1969, crews dumped roughly 28,000 tons of rock and earth to build a 600-foot cofferdam across the upper river, diverting the American Falls’ share of the flow over to the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side, which kept roaring the entire time.

For nearly six months, the American Falls was reduced to a bare cliff face and a trickle of water, while geologists drilled core samples, mapped cracks, and bolted the weakest sections of rock back together. Rather than draw complaints, the dry falls became an unexpected tourist sensation — some 100,000 people showed up the very first weekend just to see Niagara without its water. In the end, engineers decided removing the rock pile wasn’t worth the cost or the risk, and on November 25, 1969, the cofferdam was removed and the American Falls roared back to life, right on schedule.

A Personal Connection
I run the U.S. Open Beer, Whiskey, Cider and Hard Seltzer Championships, and for years our whiskey program has worked closely with the Niagara College Distilling Program right in the Falls’ backyard. For the final judging of the U.S. Open Whiskey Championship, we’d rent a large old house that backed right up to the state park itself. After long days of judging, nothing beat stepping outside and taking a long walk through the park — the roar growing louder with every step, until you rounded a bend and there it was again: the sheer magnificence of the Falls, just as awe-inspiring on the hundredth visit as the first.

Still Roaring
Today, Niagara Falls State Park still draws roughly nine million visitors a year, making it one of the busiest parks in the entire New York State system. It’s a National Historic Landmark and sits on the National Register of Historic Places, and it remains, by most accounts, the oldest continuously operating state park in the country. Visitors can still walk the Olmsted-designed paths on Goat Island, ride the historic Maid of the Mist boat tour into the mist at the base of the Falls, or duck behind the curtain of water on the Cave of the Winds tour — all thanks to a 19th-century fight to make sure Niagara would belong to everyone, forever.
Address: Niagara Falls State Park, Prospect Street & Old Falls Street, Niagara Falls, NY 14303
Website: https://www.niagarafallsstatepark.com