The Niagara River Is Hiding Something Nobody Talks About

Every summer night at 10 p.m., someone turns Niagara Falls down. Gates shift upstream, and within the hour, half the water tourists came to see is gone. It doesn't evaporate or go over the edge. It goes underground, into tunnels as tall as a four-storey building, running beneath hotels, casinos and homes whose owners have no idea what's flowing under their floors. In this documentary, we peel back the Niagara River layer by layer. We start with the 1950 treaty that puts the falls on a schedule, and the 18 sluice gates that decide how much of the waterfall you get to see. Then we look at the secret makeover that shortened the Horseshoe Falls by 355 feet so a thinner river would still look full, and why some of the viewing platforms you've stood on used to be waterfall. Next, we go beneath the cities. On the Canadian side, "Big Becky," the world's largest hard-rock tunnel boring machine, carved a river-sized tunnel under Niagara Falls, Ontario. On the American side, a deadly 1956 power station collapse led to massive conduits under Niagara Falls, New York, and a hilltop reservoir that fills with river water every night and drains every morning. Then we go deeper, and further back in time, to a ghost river. It's an ancient gorge buried by the last ice age that still bends the Niagara 90 degrees at the Whirlpool, and still forced 21st-century engineers to change their plans. We also relive the two times the river went quiet: the ice jam of 1848, when people walked the dry riverbed and found War of 1812 relics, and the summer of 1969, when engineers shut off the American Falls on purpose. Plus, the iron scow that has been stranded in the rapids above the falls since 1918. Finally, we look at where the falls are headed, and why the engineering that hides the river may also be keeping it alive. You've seen Niagara Falls. Now see the part of it they don't show you. 💬 Did you know the falls get turned down every night? Tell me in the comments which part surprised you most.