Site of the Maid of the Mist Landing1

Site of the Maid of the Mist Landing1
End of Ferry Street
Significance: From 1846, when the Maid of the Mist began service, until after Captain Joel Robinson took her through
the Whirlpool to be sold in 1861, she docked in Bellevue, just above the Suspension Bridge. This dock was the site of
the capture of Cataract House waiter Patrick Sneed, who was falsely accused of murder in August 1853.
G.W. Johnson, “A Map of the Niagara River,” (1849-50).
Closeup from G.W. Johnson, “A Map of the Niagara River,” (1849-50),
showing Maid of the Mist Landing, No. 15, at top.
Site description from Survey of Sites Relating to the Underground Railroad, Abolitionism, and African American Life in Niagara
Falls and Surrounding Area, 1820-1880, by Judith Wellman, Ph.D., April 2012, pp. 172-177. Prepared by New York
Historical Research Associates for edr Companies and the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Area
Commission. The complete historic resources survey report is available at www.niagarafallsundergroundrailroad.org.
1
“THE STEAM BOAT LANDING.—From this point, the Steam boat MAID OF THE MIST, runs up to the Falls and
lands on the Canada side, three times a day. The visitor who goes on board of that Boat, is delighted with the sublimity
of the surrounding scenery.”
Description: In October 1845, the Niagara Falls Ferry Association, whose main investors were J.V.E. Vedder and John
R. Johnston of Geneva an John Fisk of Rochester, put sixty men to work constructing a road down the bank of the
Niagara River. They planned to build the largest hotel in the U.S. at the head of the road, connecting to a ferry dock
where a new steam ferry boat, “handsomely furnished with saloons cabins, &c.” would carry people across the river to
the dock just below the Clifton House on the Canadian side. Plans were to build a hydraulic canal from Ft. Schlosser to
the head of the ferry landing, so that steamboats could run directly from Buffalo, bringing people to the proposed
Suspension Bridge, which would also be linked to a direct rail line from Rochester and then west through Canada into
the upper Great Lakes.2
The following summer, two years before the first Suspension Bridge was built, the Maid of the Mist began its
operations. It weighed 100 tons and was powered by two twenty-five horsepower engines. The Maid of the Mist docked
just south of the Whirlpool on the U.S. side of the river and just below the Clifton House on the Canadian side. Access
to boat tours was convenient. Tourists could reach the dock by railroad cars that left major hotels on the U.S. side
fifteen minutes before the boat departed. Carriages took visitors on the Canadian side from the dock to local sites. To
reassure fearful visitors, broadsides advertised a “sober and experienced crew.” 3
When the Suspension Bridge was finished for road traffic in 1848, use of the Maid of the Mist as a ferry service
declined, and the boat began to cater specifically to tourists who wanted a close view of the Falls. Under Captain Filkin
and later Captain Thomas Vedder, the boat made three trips daily from the dock near the Suspension Bridge, swinging
near the base of the Falls before docking in Canada and then returning to the U.S. Its first boilers were inadequate,
quickly replaced by two more powerful boilers. Still, “many had doubts of her strength and safety and deemed it a
hazardous exploit to make one of her brief voyages,” reported the Buffalo Courier Express. Visitors nevertheless “trod her
quivering deck, as her elfin hull rose and fell in the mad tide.” 4
From the top of the road leading to the dock, visitors had a “distinct and beautiful view of the entire falls.”
After they paid their fifty cent fare, they boarded the Maid of the Mist at 9 a.m., 11 a.m., or 3 p.m., for a one-and-a-half to
two mile, forty-minute trip through the gorge. Once aboard, thirty to sixty passengers, “some enquiring with earnestness
if there is any danger,” enjoyed cabins and a saloon inside. They could also don “india rubber dresses” to view the Falls
from the promenade deck outside.
Like a YouTube video in the twenty-first century, he Geneva Gazette described the trip in rich visual detail:
The boat begins to move through this quiet eddy with great power and beauty. In a few minutes, you
arrive at a bold point of the high precipitous bank projecting into the river, and making the current
doubly strong. As the boat strikes the surge, it stops; and you cast your eye on the gentlemanly captain
to see if he betrays any emotion. You see him watching, yet confident in the machinery of the vessel.
It moves up slowly, soon turns the point, and conquers the current powerful s it is. You pass on with
a faster motion. You turn another point—come to the old ferry, pass the inclined plane and approach
the American Fall. You course along the white and foaming billows made by the dashing waters. You
look up and almost perpendicularly, on the white sheet of waters dashing down this highest portion of
the vast precipice. The slow motion of the boat gives you time to contemplate the grandeur of the
cataract and the power of Him who made it. You pass the cascade Falls as they are sometimes called,
separated from the last by a small island, as if to show that beauty is the sister of sublimity. You move
on quietly and slowly near the bank, passing the Biddle stair-case, and approach the great Horse Shoe
Falls with its measureless volume of water. The now take in, at one view, the sublimest portion of the
most tremendous cataract in the world. The boat advances till the prow strikes the foaming, boiling
and dashing waters of the immense caldron before you. As if a thing of life aware of the danger of
2
Providence, Rhode Island, Journal, October 27, 1845.
3
“Steamer Maid of the Mist,” broadside, 1848, Courtesy Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society; “The Steamer Maid
of the Mist,” Iris, August 28, 1850, Niagara Falls Public Library.
4
Geneva Gazette, June 19, 1847, October 3, 1847; Buffalo Courier Express, January 7, 1851,
images.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/51799/data?n=9.
venturing further, the boat turns quickly and glides like a shooting star, in the harbor on the Canada
shore. You hear the exclamation repeated by many around you, who have often visited Niagara, “I
have never seen the Falls before.” 5
The Rochester Daily Advertiser printed a similar description. The route passed through
wild and romantic scenery on either hand, and finally, along in front of and within a few yards—yet
perfectly safe—of the American and Canada Horse Shoe Falls. The view from the deck of the
steamer, as she moves along under easy steam, with the rainbows on board, and all about you, the
roar of the cataract, the rushing over head, and a hundred and sixty feet above you, of that mighty
avalanche of deep blue water with the commotion of the waters in which your boat is now gracefully
rising and falling, as upon the sea, the huge rocks piled upon rocks, as thrown there in heaps by some
all powerful hand, all combine to form a scene of surpassing grandeur; and . . . never to be forgotten.
6
As for fear, that passed quickly. “The emotion of sublimity swallows up every other feeling. All stand in silent
amazement at the unsurpassed sublimity of this new view of this wonderful work of the Creator’s hand.” 7
By July 1847, the Lockport Democrat could report, “this steam boat is now the attraction at the Falls.” 8
Poster, August 1850
Courtesy Niagara Falls Public Library
5
Geneva Gazette, July 31, 1847.
Geneva Gazette, June 19, 1847, copied from the Rochester Democrat. There are many accounts of taking the tour on the
Maid of the Mist; Frederick H. Johnson, Every Man His Own Guide at Niagara Falls (New York: Phinney, 1852), 79.
6
7
Geneva Gazette, July 31, 1847.
8
Geneva Gazette, July 17, 1847, copied from Lockport Democrat.
The business was not without its problems, however. In 1851, the company sustained a major blow when the
Maid of the Mist sank at its moorings under an avalanche of snow. Without insurance, they lost the whole cost of the boat,
nearly $10,000. Undaunted, however, investors launched a new Maid of the Mist in 1854, with more powerful engines.
Thousands of tourists took the trip up to the Falls, many of them several times.9
Niagara Falls Gazette, August 4, 1859
Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
For a time in the late 1850s, the Maid of the Mist also landed at the ferry landing at the base of the American
Falls. In 1860, however, W.O. Buchanan, then owner of the Maid, was not able to work out an arrangement with the
Porter-Whitney families, who operated the ferry, so he reverted to landing on the U.S. side only at the dock near the
Suspension Bridge. The boat made four or five trips per day from Suspension Bridge, along with “pleasure trips from
the Canada dock . . . to suit the wishes of parties.” 10
In 1861, however, Buchanan found such an arrangement unprofitable. He sold the Maid of the Mist to a
Montreal company, who stipulated that it must be delivered to Niagara, Ontario, across from Fort Niagara. At great risk
to his life, Captain Joel Robinson agreed to pilot the boat through the Whirlpool rapids, accompanied by Mr. Jones as
engineer and Mr. McIntyre as machinist. They made the harrowing journey with both the boat and their lives intact, but
Mrs. Robinson thought her husband had age twenty years in that one day. The Maid of the Mist, renamed the Maid of
Orleans, finished her career giving tourists a view of Quebec from the St. Lawrence River. 11
9
Buffalo Courier Express, January 7, 1851, images.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/51799/data?n=9.
10
Niagara Falls Gazette, June 2, 1860.
11
Scientific American, September 8, 1883; www.maidofthemist.com/
.
Maid of the Mist in the Whirlpool, June 15, 1861
Harper’s Weekly, June 22, 1861
Discussion: In August 1853, U.S. marshals pursued Cataract Hotel waiter Patrick Sneed, accusing him not of escaping
from slavery but of murder. Ferry boat rowers took Sneed almost to the Canada ferry landing before learning of his
murder charge. At that point, they changed course and rowed Sneed to the Maid of the Mist landing near the Suspension
Bridge. Aided by Irish workers (perhaps working to renovate the dock or to build the new and more powerful Maid of the
Mist, launched in 1854), marshals captured Sneed at the landing and took him by rail and carriage to jail in Buffalo. His
subsequent trial revealed the murder charge to be fraudulent and resulted in Sneed’s release. For more details, see the
description of the Cataract House.