HYDROLOGY OF NEW YORK 



G47 



in 1822 Augustus Porter built a gristmill along the rapids above 

 the falls. From that year to 1885, when the lands along the river 

 were taken for a State park, a considerable amount of power was 

 developed by a canal which took water out of the river near the 

 head of the rapids and followed along the shore nearly parallel 

 with the bank of the river. Mills were built between this canal 

 and the river, and a part of the 50-foot fall between the head of 

 the rapids and the brink of the American Falls was thus utilized. 

 A papermill was built on Bath island at an early date. 



In 1842 Augustus Porter, one of the principal mill owners at 

 Niagara Falls, proposed a considerable extension of the then 

 existing system of canals and races, and in January, 1847, in 

 connection with Peter Emslie, he published a formal plan which 

 became the subject of negotiations with Walter Bryant and Caleb 

 S. Woodhull. An agreement was finally reached by which they 

 were to construct a canal and receive a plot of land at the head 

 of the canal, having a frontage of 425 feet on Niagara river, 

 together with a right of way 100 feet wide for the canal along its 

 entire length of 4400 feet, and about 75 acres of land near the 

 terminus, having a frontage on the river below the falls of nearly 

 a mile. The canal constructed under this agreement passes 

 through what is now the most thickly settled part of the city of 

 Niagara Falls. 



Ground was broken by Messrs Bryant & Woodhull in 1853 and 

 the work carried on for about sixteen months, when it was sus- 

 pended for lack of funds. Nothing further was done until 1858, 

 when Stephen Allen carried the work forward for a time; later, 

 in 1861, Horace H. Day took up the matter and completed a canal 

 36 feet wide, 8 feet deep, and 4400 feet long, by which the water of 

 the upper river was brought to a basin near the brink of the high 

 bluff of the lower river and at an elevation of 214 feet above the 

 lower river. Upon the margin of this basin various mills have been 

 constructed, to the wheels of which water is conducted from the 

 canal and discharged through the bluff into the river below. The 

 first mill built on this hydraulic canal was a small gristmill, 

 erected by Charles B. Gaskill in 1870 on the site of the present 

 large flouring mill of the Cataract Milling Company. 



Niagara Falls Hydraulic Pqtver and Manufacturing Company. 

 In 1877 the hydraulic canal and all its appurtenances were pur- 



