Niagara Falls State Park: A Shiny New Look

New York State Parks Police Sgt. Jeffrey Eckert snaps a photo for couple Omar Ramos and Jalisa Cruz who were visiting from Rochester. The wall behind is part of the $6.2 million Niagara Falls State Park Welcome Plaza revitalization project. James Neiss

A shiny new loo k for Niagar a Falls State Par k

DEVELOPMENT: $150M revitalization project has upgraded visitors’ experience.

The Big Picture - A tourist gets his shot during a visit to Goat Island at Niagara Falls State Park. The couple traveled from Detroit to see the sights. James Neiss

Atrip to Niagara Falls State Park looks a lot different today then it did 10 years

ago.

It’s the result of a $150 million revitalization project undertaken by New York state.

Recent work has resulted in a new welcome plaza leading into the park from Prospect Street in downtown Niagara Falls. It’s located at the corner of Prospect Street and Mayor Michael O’Laughlin Drive, near the Hard Rock Cafe downtown.

Launched in 2011, the Niagara Falls State Park landscape revitalization plan was a multi-year commitment to renew the park in a manner that better reflects noted park designer Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision for the landscape.

The plan has already led to the renovation of the park’s major viewing areas with new pedestrian walkways, enhanced landscaping, new benches, light posts and railings. Those areas include: • Luna Island • Prospect Point • Lower Grove • Three Sisters Islands • North Shoreline Trail • Luna Bridge • Terrapin Point

The interactive Cave of the Winds pavilion, which highlights the natural and cultural history of Niagara Falls, opened in 2017.

A new $46 million visitors center is also in the works and is expected to open in a few years. The interpretive center will serve as a gateway to not only the park but the Niagara River corridor.

The new 28,000-square-foot visitor center will include an interpretive museum space including an immersive experience and exhibits highlighting a diversity of topics including natural, industrial and Indigenous American history.

Even the Maid of the Mist tour boats have undergone changes. Launched late in 2020, the James V. Glynn and Nikola Tesla are all-electric, emission-free vessels, the only ones of their kind in the U.S.

Two leading maritime publications, American Ship Review and Marine News, both named the new vessels “Ship of the Year” for 2021.

You can get around to see all there is to see at Niagara Falls State Park by riding the park trolley.

The lithium-ion batteries are recharged in seven minutes between tours while the vessels are docked.

A new feature of the voyage, available only on Maid of the Mist, comes on the return trip from the Horseshoe falls when the vessel stops again in front of the American falls and completes a 360-degree revolution, a maneuver made possible through the bow thruster propulsion system.

Even the boats’ docking facility offers unique views of the Niagara Gorge.

A few steps away from the Niagara Gorge Discovery Center, an admission-free elevator — rebuilt from the shaft of the original Schoellkopf Power Station destroyed in an earth and rock slide in June 1956 — takes passengers 170 feet down to the base of the gorge.

Aside from a storage center for the boats, the entire area affords an unmatched panorama of the lower Niagara River, the steep walls of the sprawling power plant —large sections that escaped the massive slide — the Ontario side dotted with the high-rise buildings not allowed on this side, and the mist in the distance as viewed under the graceful arch of the Rainbow Bridge.

The Maid of the Mist VII leaves the dock for the first trip of the 2020 season. Masks were required, and social distancing was practiced. James Neiss