Niagara Falls 



1905 h eac l f Niagara Falls and the first to be located in the Gorge. 

 This company operates a paper mill at the top of the cliff, and a 

 pulp mill at its foot, at the edge of the river. After passing down 

 a wheel pit in the cliff and driving turbines under a head of 75 

 ft. the water for the pulp mill goes into an iron penstock and 

 drops another 125 ft. to horizontal Leffel wheels that develop 

 about 2,500 hp. From the tail race of these wheels the water 

 flows directly into the river. This pulp mill in the Gorge 

 was erected and operated before either of the great electric 

 stations at Niagara Falls were built, and prior to 1895, only 

 two of these stations, one on the American and another on the 

 Canadian side of the river, have since followed it to the foot of 

 the cliffs. One of these stations, that of the Niagara Falls 

 Hydraulic Power & Manufacturing Co. close to the pulp mill of 

 the Cliff Paper Co. began to generate electric power in 1896, 

 with horizontal turbines operating under a water head of 2 1 ft. 

 from the canal above. This was the first electric station to locate 

 in the gorge. 



During the previous year another plan for the development of 

 power with the combined head of the Falls and upper rapids 

 had been carried to completion in the plant of the Niagara Falls 

 Power Company. Between 1883 and 1885, Thomas Evershed, 

 an engineer engaged in the survey of the Niagara Falls Park 

 Reservation, proposed a tunnel running beneath the city of 

 Niagara Falls, and a system of canals and wheel pits, for the 

 purpose of power production. The tunnel was to have a length 

 of about 2.5 miles, was to connect with smaller tunnels, 

 and was to vent at water level in the Gorge, just north of the 

 reservation. Main and branch canals were to divert water from 

 Niagara River above the upper rapids, and to deliver it in wheel 

 pits along the lines of tunnels, for turbine wheels located on the 

 pit floors. A company was formed to carry out this idea in a 

 revised form, under which the wheel pits were brought close 

 together and electric distribution of power was to take the place 

 of branch canals and tunnels. For the development of electric 



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