USA > New York > Niagara County > Outpost of empires; a short history of Niagara County > Part 20
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Porter's plan would give Niagara Falls future industrial space. Otherwise, mills would have to remain on the raceways at the American Rapids. But Porter was ahead of his time. Nobody cared to invest, although he offered the necessary land free of charge. This plan for a hydraulic canal was still on paper when Porter died in 1849.
What progress was made on the canal?
The Niagara Falls Hydraulic Company started to dig
Porter's family, however, kept his plan alive. They repeated the offer of free land to any company willing to dig the canal across the village to the high bank. Finally, three years after Porter died, a man from New York City named Caleb Woodhull and one from Boston, Walter Bryant, accepted this offer. In the spring of 1853 these men organized the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Company to dig the canal. An engineer from Boston, Stephen Allen, was an important leader in this company and in the company that later followed it.
Nearby Buffalo was then a growing city and a likely market for goods manufactured in Niagara Falls. And, of course, the nearby Erie Canal was a route to eastern markets. Therefore, the Hydrau- lic Company planned a harbor and docks at the canal intake opposite Grass Island. Along the canal itself, barges would move to and from the mills on the basin. In 1853, Niagara Falls already had excellent railroad connections. With both land and water transportation available, goods from Niagara Falls mills could be shipped easily to Buffalo and eastern markets.
Ground was broken for the canal soon after the company was formed. Great steam drills chewed up the rock and bored into the limestone to a depth of twenty feet. Forty pounds of black powder were planted in each hole. Blasting sent rocks flying in all direc- tions. Drilling and blasting one hole took a day and a half.
This drilling and blasting went on month after month, and slowly the canal was ripped from the rock. But meanwhile the com- pany had run into financial troubles. Money disappeared into the "ditch" faster than it could be borrowed. At last Woodhull and his friends had to admit defeat. The company was bankrupt. It had sunk at least a half-million dollars into the canal.
Horace Day completed it
For two years work was stopped. Then, in 1856, Stephen Allen stepped in and re- organized the old Hydraulic Company. Its name was changed to the Niagara Falls Water Power Company. Allen took over as president. And he also took full charge of the canal construction.
A man now appeared who was to act out an important but tragic part in our story of Niagara Power. His name was Horace Day. He came to Niagara Falls a rich man. But in the end he lost much of his wealth on the hydraulic canal. Day enters our story here as vice-president and treasurer of the new company that Allen formed.
Allen and Day wasted no time. Drilling and blasting picked up where the Hydraulic Company had stopped. By the spring of 1857 the canal had been dug through the high bank. However it was not yet ready for commercial use. But Port Day, the harbor at the mouth of the canal basin, had been completed and was now open for shipping. July 4, 1857, was a great day for Niagara Falls. A big crowd gathered at Port Day. Allen made a speech. He hailed the opening of steamboat transportation from Buffalo. Then three steamers puffed down the Niagara River and entered Port Day harbor. Whistles tooted and the crowd cheered. The future looked bright.
However, the Water Power Company was headed down the road to bankruptcy also. The collapse finally came in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. By this time almost $300,000 more had been added to the bill for the canal. Horace Day now made what was in the end a costly mistake, at least for him. He purchased the canal property. Then he reorganized the Water Power Company as the Niagara Falls Canal Company. Day resumed work on the canal. And he kept at it on and off for the next seventeen years.
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Meanwhile, the canal was making changes in Niagara Falls. Population rose as laborers came seeking work. An Irish shanty- town sprang up at the head of the canal. The canal also put dollars into the pockets of the local businessmen in another way. It became one of the "sights." For a while, in fact, it was almost as big an attraction for tourists as the falls themselves.
But time passed and the work dragged on and on. The canal no longer was a novelty for any one. The people of Niagara Falls be- gan to see it mostly as a dangerous nuisance. A number of them had fallen into it and drowned. Time and time again the Niagara Falls Gazette warned people to stay away from it. Shantytown was another sore spot with the people of Niagara Falls. On Saturday nights, hard-drinking workmen and their womenfolk brawled in the streets there and in Niagara Falls itself. More than once, some- one was killed before the night was over.
For Horace Day, these were hard years. He kept sinking more and more of his money into the canal. And yet it seemed that it would never be finished. Somehow Day kept his faith in the future of Niagara Falls as a power center. Finally the great day came. The canal was completed and ready for business. Day walked into the Gazette office and put an advertisement in the paper offering waterpower and mill sites for sale. It was the spring of 1875.
Charles Gaskill used the canal to run a flour mill This advertisement ran for months and months in the Gazette. Meanwhile Day twiddled his thumbs waiting for customers. Finally one man showed real interest in his proposition. This man was Charles Gaskill. Gaskill, a flour miller, had fought in the Union Army during the Civil War.
Gaskill put up his flour mill on the canal basin in 1875. He be- gan by sinking a shaft twenty-five feet down into the high bank. At the bottom of this shaft he installed improved water wheels called turbines. He drew water from the canal basin. It poured through iron tubes and then fell down the shaft, operating the tur- bines which in turn provided power for the flour mill. The used water spilled out of a tail-race tunnel at the bottom of the shaft. Gaskill could use only a twenty-five foot fall of water for water power. In 1875 nobody knew how to build a wheel that could stand the shock of water falling the full two-hundred foot distance avail- able on the high bank.
This flour mill alone could not make the hydraulic canal pay for itself. Day knew this and so did everyone else. He needed more cus- tomers and he needed them desperately. But nobody was interested
and the situation went from bad to worse. Day had sunk a fortune into the canal over the years. And he was not alone by any means. Stockholders in the Canal Company had invested all they could. On top of it all, Day had borrowed heavily. His company was deeply in debt and all its property was mortgaged. By 1877 he had raised every penny he possibly could. Under these conditions a crash was bound to come. In the spring the people he owed money to would not wait any longer. They put him out of business. Day's Canal Com- pany was finally bankrupt.
Jacob Schoellkopf
On May 1, 1877, Horace Day saw a crowd bought the hydraulic of gentlemen in frock coats and stove-pipe canal
hats enter the parlor of the Spencer House in Niagara Falls. These men had come to bid at public auction for his canal property. Among them was a merchant from Buffalo named Jacob Schoellkopf.
Schoellkopf was born in Germany in 1819. He came to America as a young man and eventually made a fortune in the leather busi- ness. Schoellkopf had earned a reputation over the years for his sound business judgment. And here in the Spencer House on this day he made the best bargain of his life. His bid of $71,000 put the canal property in his hands. This was not much to pay for some- thing that had, up to this time, cost $1,500,000. Later, Schoellkopf paid Horace Day another $5,000. This made the actual purchase price of the hydraulic canal $76,000.
When the bidding was over, Horace Day followed the crowd down the wooden steps of the Spencer House and along Falls Street. His dream was over, ended with the rap of the auctioneer's hammer back in the Spencer House. Twenty-one years of hopes had vanished into the hydraulic canal. Day's hydraulic canal now belonged to Jacob Schoellkopf of Buffalo. Horace Day pushed his hands into his pockets and wałked on.
Schoellkopf made a success of it Many people thought Jacob Schoellkopf had made a mistake that day in the Spencer House by sinking good money into the "ditch." It was nothing but a "white elephant" they said, and Schoellkopf would fail as the others had. But the merchant from Buffalo smiled and went ahead with his plans. In 1878, he and a partner, George Mathews, organized the fourth company to develop power from Niagara. This company was known as the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company.
Soon after they formed this company, Schoellkopf and Mathews put up two flour mills between the canal basin and the high bank.
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One of these flour mills was called the Central Milling Company. It used an eighty-foot fall of water to run its machinery. The other mill to use the canal as a source of power was the Niagara Wood Paper Company.
Three years after the birth of the Hydraulic Power and Manu- facturing Company, an entirely new development burst upon the Niagara scene. And Schoellkopf originated it. In 1881, he built a hydro-electric generating station in J. F. Quigley's pulp mill on the high bank. Electric power generated here supplied an arc light machine owned by the Brush Electric Light Company, another Schoellkopf enterprise.
An electric light company at Niagara was big news in 1881. Up to this time nobody had thought seriously about electricity in con- nection with Niagara power. In fact, the practical use of electricity was still very new. So the Gazette promptly ran the story. Soon several mills and stores and the Gazette office itself had electric lights. More orders for electric lighting poured in. A new era of electricity began at Niagara Falls.
By 1882, Schoellkopf was furnishing water power to seven mills on the high bank. None, however, used the full fall of water-over two hundred feet from the top of the cliff to the bottom of the gorge -which was available. No wheels had yet been developed to with- stand the shock of water falling that great distance. But Schoell- kopf had made his point-the hydraulic canal could pay for itself.
What was Evershed's plan for increasing power?
This success raised a new problem, that of finding mill sites for the use of the power now available. Mills on the high bank, remem- ber, drew water from the storage basin. The water in the basin drained in from the hydraulic canal which ran from the upper river through the village of Niagara Falls. This arrangement was good except that the power supply was limited to the area just below the storage basin-in other words, to Schoellkopf's power development. And just so much mill space existed there.
There was, of course, another place at Niagara where water power was available. Bath Island and the land along the American Rapids had long been power sites. But this area was already packed with mills. So here too expansion was limited.
Niagara industry was hit hard in 1885. The New York State Reservation was created at Niagara Falls in that year. Goat Island and Bath Island and the strip along the American Rapids became a
Tons of rock smash the Schoellkopf station.
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public park. This action by New York saved the beauty of the falls for future generations. But turning this area into a public park cut down the number of power sites available at Niagara. And many mills already built there had to find other locations.
A break in this situation came in 1886. In February, the editor of a Lockport newspaper found an unusual letter in his mail. It had been written by Thomas Evershed, an engineer on the Erie Canal. This letter is important for our story because in it Evershed outlined a new plan for developing Niagara power.
This was his plan. Dig a mammoth tunnel for two and a half miles under the village of Niagara Falls. This tunnel would be a tail-race for mills situated on the surface above it. These mills would pull water to turn wheels and turbines from twelve surface canals connected with the upper river above the Niagara Reservation. The used water would then drop down into the tail-race tunnel and eventually discharge into the gorge.
Evershed's plan caused an immediate stir among business people in Niagara Falls. Charles Gaskill, the flour miller, was among those who recognized its possibilities. In 1886, he helped organize a com- pany to put Evershed's plan into operation. This company was known as the Niagara River Hydraulic Tunnel Power and Sewer Company. Gaskill was president.
But Gaskill's company soon found that raising funds was a big problem. In fact, three years passed before the company had enough money for the tunnel. In 1889, the Tunnel Power and Sewer Com- pany changed its name to the Niagara Falls Power Company. This new company contracted with the Cataract Construction Company to start boring the tunnel. In October, 1890, Gaskill turned the first spadeful of earth and work began.
Evershed's plan had drawbacks. It was costly. But this not all. Tunnel work, especially in limestone, was a difficult task. Besides, in winter the shallow surface canals would probably clog with ice. This of course would cut off power for the mills. Finally, Niagara Falls could not use all the power that could be developed. At this time its population was only about five thousand.
Much of Evershed's plan was abandoned. The company went ahead with its main feature, the tunnel. But it was to be shortened to cut construction costs. The tunnel could be used to carry tail water from turbines located in a central generating station on the upper river to the lower river. The central generating station on the upper river could then send electricity to the surrounding countryside-if a way could be found to send it. A good market for electricity was nearby. This, of course, was Buffalo, a city with over
a quarter of a million inhabitants in 1890. Buffalo was only twenty miles away. But for a while it might just as well have been on the moon. Nobody knew how to send electric power over such a distance. Up to this time, companies that used electric power had always been located near the plants that generated it.
How was hydroelectric power sent to Buffalo?
The greatest minds in the world set to work on this problem of transmitting electric power to Buffalo. A grand prize of $100,000 was offered for the best solution. In 1890 the International Niagara Power Commission met in London to examine the best plans sub- mitted. This Commission was sponsored by the Cataract Construc- tion Company. It included world-famous American and European scientists and engineers. Nobody won the grand prize. But the com- mission concluded that electrical transmission of both direct and alternating current was possible.
An argument then developed over which current was better. Among the famous men who took part were Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Edison came out for direct current. Westing- house was one of those who supported alternating current. In the end the Cataract Company chose direct current for local purposes and alternating current to transmit electric power to Buffalo. Mean- while, the tunnel had been completed in December, 1892.
George Westinghouse got the contract to build the huge alter- nating current generators. The Cataract Company had them in- stalled in Power House Number One at the beginning of the dis- charge tunnel. Transmitting power to Buffalo was a big problem because high voltage was needed. Transformers were developed to overcome this difficulty. At Niagara, transformers would raise voltage so that power could be sent to Buffalo. In Buffalo, other transformers would lower the voltage so that the electricity could be used for commercial purposes. With this problem solved, a trans- mission system was erected to carry the electricity to Buffalo.
In August, 1895, generators in Power House Number One pro- duced electricity for the Pittsburgh Reduction Company in Niagara Falls. At Niagara, demands for power soon increased. But the biggest day of all came in the following year. On November 16, 1896, a switch was thrown and current raced over the wires to Buffalo-just one minute after midnight.
Cannons booming in Buffalo announced the beginning of a new era for Niagara Falls as a power center. In the years that followed we shall see hydro-electric power change the small town by the river into a great industrial center. This is the subject of our next two chapters.
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14. Industrial Niagara gains strength
A river gives life to a city
How important is the river to Niagara Falls?
Twenty miles north of Buffalo, the mighty Niagara River sweeps west and then turns to the north again on its way to Lake Ontario. In the elbow of this river is Niagara Falls, a fast-growing city of over 100,000 people. A good deal of the river rushes through tunnels and covered channels beneath the city and then slams through turbines to produce electric power. Heavy power lines stretch from the power plants out over the countryside, like fingers whose magic touch brings life to thousands of homes and factories.
Niagara Falls would become a ghost town if this river vanished. The great electric furnaces would go out. The factories now crowd- ing the river bank would no longer turn out their products. The haze of smoke from a forest of smoke stacks would disappear, and so would the piercing smell of chemicals. The shining railroad tracks that curve through the city would begin to rust. The heavy traffic that now crawls over main streets would no longer carry people to work or to shopping centers. Thousands of people without jobs would leave the city and misery would become common for those who stayed. Without the river, there would be no Niagara Falls.
What was Niagara Falls like before power brought industries?
The river, remember, did not build this thriving city overnight. Before men really learned to put the river to work, Niagara Falls was a small village. In summer, barefoot children rolled hoops in the dusty village streets. On Saturdays, wagons, buggies, and saddle horses crowded hitching rails before stores and shops. And stables were as much a part of village homes as garages are today. Chickens and hogs, and sometimes cows, were still seen in back- yards.
These were the horse and buggy days of industry, too. Factories still used the river's power in the same old way-to run clumsy millwheels. Although some of the river power was harnessed to make electricity in 1881, the electricity was used only for lighting.
A familiar fixture on Niagara's skyline.
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But in these same horse and buggy days of the 1880's and 1890's, important discoveries were being made. Scientists found that electricity could do some wonderful things-things that started whole new chemical industries. They were also building new ma- chines to stand up under the pounding of the river and to produce more electric power. These discoveries and machines meant future greatness for the little village by the Niagara River.
This chapter tells how industry changed a horse and buggy village into an industrial center. It is the story of the men who started industries in Niagara Falls. And it is the story of the industries themselves-how they got started, why they came to Niagara Falls, and how they grew beside the river. To really under- stand this story, it is important to remember that industry and power walked hand in hand. One helped the other. Neither power nor industry alone could have built Niagara Falls.
Electric power attracts electrochemical industries
What is the story of the early electrochemical industries?
The first was aluminum
The first electrochemical industry in Ni- agara Falls began on August 26, 1895. On that summer day workmen threw switches at the Niagara Falls Power Company. Five thousand horsepower of electricity rushed through a maze of wires to the Pittsburgh Reduction Company. Within this small plant a group of men waited impatiently to throw switches to start the electric furnaces.
For days the men of Pittsburgh Reduction had prepared for this moment. They had checked and rechecked the rectangular pan- shaped furnaces, the wiring, the electrodes and the connections. And then they checked them again. Satisfied that all was ready, they poured purified aluminum ore into a furnace and dissolved it in cryolite, much as sugar is dissolved in water. Finally they threw the switches and sent electricity through the mixture of aluminum ore and cryolite. Then they watched and waited.
As they stood near the furnace, their thoughts drifted back nine years to 1886. They recalled the first few drops of aluminum
Charles M. Hall had made with electricity. Two years later, he had started his small five-man factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania then moved to Lockport for six months. They relived the troubles of those first years-failure to get large amounts of cheap elec- tricity, break-downs of furnaces, poor sales. They remembered their decision to move to Niagara Falls where the Niagara Falls Power Company offered cheap electricity. Here Hall and his backers built a new plant. Now the day had arrived when they were ready to begin production.
On this August day in 1895, their dreams and hopes seemed to be coming true. As they watched aluminum being made, they felt the heat as electricity flowed through the mixture. They watched a crust form on top of the mixture where it was exposed to the air. In their minds, perhaps, they saw the aluminum separating from the cryolite and settling to the bottom of the pan-shaped furnace.
Finally, they were ready to tap the furnace. Workmen pulled the plug near the bottom and a bright silver thread of aluminum flowed into iron molds like a glistening string of silver beads. There was much handshaking and back slapping-the first aluminum had been made in Niagara Falls by the first customer of the Niagara Falls Power Company. The electrochemical industry in Niagara Falls had begun-on August 26, 1895.
Once started, the furnaces never stopped making aluminum until the carbon electrodes burned or the furnaces needed other repairs. Men kept adding aluminum ore and cryolite. And alum- inum kept settling to the furnace bottom to be drawn off into molds. When it cooled, it was shipped to other factories to be made into the hundreds of items using aluminum. Day by day, men found new uses for aluminum and more furnaces went into operation. Within a year the company doubled production and built another plant.
Not only in Niagara Falls, but throughout the nation, aluminum plants sprang up. Men invested huge sums of money in the new light-weight metal. Aluminum production became so widespread that several companies joined in 1907 to form the Aluminum Com- pany of America. Pittsburgh Reduction became part of this com- pany, and the Niagara Falls plant became a unit in the vast works of the Aluminum Company of America.
Following World War II, the company went through another period of change. Some plants were closed and production shifted elsewhere. One of the plants closed was the Niagara Falls plant. In 1949, the first electrochemical industry in Niagara Falls moved from its early home by the Niagara River.
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Dr. Edward Acheson discovered and pro- duced carborundum Like that of aluminum, the story of the second electrochemical industry in Niagara Falls began in western Pennsylvania. In 1890, a young scientist worked in his labora- tory in Monongahela, south of Pittsburgh. The young man was searching for a way to make a diamond-like material that would be harder than any natural grinding material. His name was Dr. Edward Acheson and he thought the way to make the new grinding material or abrasive was by using electricity.
By the time he was thirty-five, Dr. Acheson had seen much of electricity. He had worked with Thomas A. Edison in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He had traveled in Europe installing electric light plants. And when he decided to make his own way, he naturally turned to the thing he knew best-electricity.
After leaving Edison, Dr. Acheson raised what money he could and moved to Monongahela. To pay for his experiments, he planned to light homes and streets at night. During the day he would use the electricity his plant generated for experiments. On November 20, 1890, his small dynamo began sending electricity to the homes and stores of his customers.
But almost immediately he was in trouble. His small power company would fail unless he got money to make it larger. He had invested his own money and what money he could borrow, so the story goes, but this was not enough. The two local banks owned the gas-lighting company that supplied light to the village. And the banks were not eager for competition from electricity. So they turned down his plea for a loan. Nor could he interest village lead- ers in his plan for their town. Every attempt to get help failed. No person in authority seemed interested in his company or in experi- ments with electricity.
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