The Cascate del Niagara They are one of the symbols par excellence of America, on the border between Canada and the United States. It is Three distinct waterfalls In both Canadian and US territory. The greatest of these is the Horseshoe Fall, that is, in shape of horseshoe, which even measures 800 meters wide and is located in Canadian territory; The smallest are instead theAmerican Falls (320 meters high) and the Bridal Veil Falls (17 meters), both in US territory. Do you think that overall every second they flow from the waterfalls more than 3100 tons of water! But, how did these waterfalls formed? And why was one of the first large hydroelectric power plants in the world right here by Nikola Tesla?
How the Niagara waterfalls formed
We are in the last ice age in what is today the area between Canada And United States. Here, among the 15 and 12 thousand years agobegan to merge most of the present ice. This, as it is easy to guess, made a huge amount of water available, which went to immediately fill all those huge basins dug by the glaciers themselves. Here, those basin filled with water in reality still exist today, and they are nothing more than the large Canadian lakes, such as the Lake erie or the Lago Ontario. That’s just between these two lakes began to scroll a river, the Niagarawhich brought water from one another. This river flowed on a series of rocky layers.
The more superficial ones are composed of dolomia, A resistant rock composed mainly of Dolomite – like the one in Trentino Alto Adige to understand us – while there are rocks below sedimentary much more Herodes. Precisely the latter, originating from the compaction of clay, mud and organic matter, being more weak tend to Erco first and therefore they collapse. And these collapses in turn also cause the collapse of the aforementioned portions of Dolomia. In this way it formed the shoe – That is, this huge step- that we can still see today!
And this step also has a very high geological importance. If we could remove all the water and see the rock behind it, we could see a succession of layers that has formed in addition 400 million years! But have you ever imagined how the niagara waterfalls could be water? Well, someone has seen them less than sixty years ago.
The drying up of the Niagara waterfalls
In June of 1969 an American-Canadian commission decided to Taking out voluntarily the American Falls to be able to remove all debris who had accumulated at the base. Let’s talk about large blocks of rock eroded in the millennia which now began to have a volume of over 100 thousand cubic meters. In practice, they went to decrease the overall height of the waterfalland this is well understood that it is a problem above all from a tourist and landscape point of view. Then that year, after making a temporary dam to divert the flow towards the Horseshoe Falls, They started to remove all these blocks and give new life to the waterfall.
Among other things, this is not the only problem related to erosion. In fact, perhaps not everyone knows it but the Niagara waterfalls have not always been here where they are today … in the past they were up to Lewiston, Meaning what 11 km more downstream! But how is it possible? Well, simple. That same erosion mechanism that we have seen is continuous over time, and does nothing but progressively erode the rock, making this big step back on more and more. In the past, in fact, there was a single waterfall, which then separated in three different flows when, backward, intercepted the Goat Island, That is, the island that is still there today and that divides the flows.
Consider that this natural process of erosion would be able to make the cascade of approx 90 centimeters per year. This is an important value, and for this reason numerous hydraulic engineering works have been carried out over the years that have made it possible to reduce this value to only About 30 centimeters. However precisely because of this continuous erosion, the Niagara waterfalls are destined to disappear. Of course, not from today, we still talk about something like 50 thousand yearsbut sooner or later the continuous regression of the waterfall will reach easily eroded soils that will be consumed in a short time, going to de facto the leap that we all know.
In any case, it is a distant time and therefore for now we can continue to enjoy this show, which fascinates as much as the French explorers who first arrived on the spot, in the distant 1678.
The history of the discovery of the waterfalls
This date is often indicated as “Discovery of the Niagara waterfalls“But in reality it is not entirely true. This is the year of discovered by the Europeansbecause the Native Americans had lived there for a long time before. So much so that the same name Niagara seems to derive from the native term onguiaahra Which means “tonating noise”, precisely because of the sound of the water that she gets out. In any case, the first European settlers remained amazed by this beauty and brought the myth to home, where in a short time the waterfall became the symbol par excellence of America – at least until the construction of the statue of freedom.
Do you think that the fame of this place even arrived in Croatia, where it is said that a faded photograph of the waterfalls came in the hands of a young boy full of ambitions. This boy was Nikola Tesla.
Tesla and the Niagara waterfalls
Tesla from an early age underwent a great fascination for the Niagara waterfalls, even if he would never have imagined himself to become one of the protagonists of his history. In fact, we are at the end of the nineteenth century, Tesla had just resigned from the company of Edison due to a tough quarrel. Tesla in fact claimed that the alternating current It would have been the best solution to transport electric current On great distances while Edison, at the time of Tesla’s employer, claimed that the direct current It was the best solution. This difference of visions, combined with a non -payment of Edison for Tesla’s work performance, officially broke the relationship between the two.
Tesla then yes fought And he went to collaborate with another magnate of electricity, George Westinghouse, who married his vision of the transport of electricity electricity instead of continuous current. Thanks to their ambition, Tesla and Westinghouse managed to create a project that until then seemed impossible: to use the energy of the Niagara waterfalls to produce electricity. In other words, in 1895 they gave birth to One of the first large hydroelectric plants of history. To date, in reality this plant is no longer active, even if visited by tourists, and two other systems have been built in its place, the Sir Adam Beck 1 and Sir Adam Beck 2.
