The Chariot of Desire: Part VI

October 26, 2017

How would we do it if we found it today? Would we still build observation decks and elevator shafts around it, onto it, and into it?  Would we still surround it with manicured lawns, gift shops, an IMAX theater, snack bars, and restaurants?

Niagara Falls State Park on the New York side is billed as the nation’s first state park. Before its inception in 1885, the Falls and surrounding areas were privately owned, so little-to-no emphasis was placed on preservation and public access. That changed after New York state (along with Canada) took over Niagara Falls via eminent domain. Still, nearly all of the aforementioned in-park amenities were built thereafter. The park designation didn’t necessarily slow development around the park, either. Hotels, casinos, and other tourist traps are densely situated near the Falls on both the American and Canadian sides. A hydroelectric facility just a few miles downstream eats up rerouted river water from above the Falls to provide electricity to much of New York state and parts of Ontario.

Harnessing the economic potential of a natural wonder has been accompanied by catastrophic setbacks. The walls of the Niagara Gorge are clustered with old mills and hydropower plants that were partially decimated by erosion and massive landslides. In 1889, the Niagara Clifton Bridge, connecting the United States and Canada over the Niagara Gorge, collapsed just a stone’s throw from the Falls. A new bridge, dubbed the Honeymoon Bridge, was constructed in its place nine years later. When that bridge collapsed in 1938, another new one was built in 1941. The Rainbow Bridge remains standing to this day.

In a brute-strength effort to better understand the erosion occurring at Niagara Falls, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completely redirected the Niagara River to the Canadian side of the Falls in 1969, effectively shutting down and drying up the American side for six months. Crews took the opportunity to patch up a few cracks before blasting their temporary dam with dynamite, thus replenishing the American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls.

The Falls erode at a rate of about one foot per year. In 50,000 years, the waterfalls will be gone.

What I see today at Niagara Falls is something between wild marvel and manmade spectacle. I can take a pedestrian bridge to Goat Island, pick up an order of french fries at a concession stand, and walk a few hundred feet over to the edge of the Horseshoe Falls, where a ceaseless mist falls on tourists from all over the world. It’s imperfect—messy, even. The geology holds thousands of years of history, but from the looks of it, we’re the biggest story it has to tell.

With soggy french fries in one hand and a steering wheel in the other, I drove my sweet Chariot eastward that day, from Niagara Falls to Seneca Falls. It was in Seneca Falls in 1848 where the world’s first women’s rights convention was held. Activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Frederick Douglass attended the two-day conference at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel. On the second day, the assembly voted on a list of resolutions that would become the Declaration of Sentiments, a document modeled on the Declaration of Independence and intended to challenge conventional notions of female inferiority.

“The history of mankind,” the document reads, “is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” A list of compelling grievances follows. To quote a few in no particular order:

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld her from rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Along with the Sentiments came a list of eleven resolutions, the most controversial of which called for women’s suffrage. Added to the list by Stanton herself, some attendees worried such a radical suggestion would delegitimize the other ten resolutions. But the resolution would pass, boosted in part by Douglass’s adamant support. Over 70 years later, a woman’s right to vote would be included in the United States Constitution.

The Women’s Rights National Historical Park, designated in 1980, commemorates the first women’s rights convention. The old chapel has been restored to appear approximately as it did in 1848, and next door is a museum with a small gift shop. A sign is posted at the street corner where the convention was held:

FIRST CONVENTION FOR
WOMAN’S RIGHTS
WAS HELD ON THIS CORNER
1848

The sign was posted by the New York State Education Department in 1932—84 years later.

It’s election season in Seneca Falls, so front lawns throughout the town are marked with signs advertising candidates in local races. Barry Porsch is running for DA; so is Joe Sapio. Frank Sinicropi and Edward Barto are vying for County Treasurer. For Town Council, pick two: David Delelys, Douglas Avery, Thomas Ruzicka, Steven Turkett. John Gallagher is unopposed for State Supreme Court Justice. Altogether, 18 candidates appear on the ballot for Seneca Falls. Four are women.

How would we do it if we found it today?