Niagara Falls

Nearly everyone who sees Niagara Falls is struck by the wonder of it. Though not among the world's highest waterfalls, Niagara Falls is, for sheer volume of water, unsurpassed at more than 750,000 gallons per second in summer. The falls spurred the invention of alternating electric current, and they run one of the largest hydroelectric developments in the world. And it really is all that water, fueled by four of the Great Lakes—Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie—as they flow into the fifth, Ontario, that ranks Niagara as one of the planet's natural wonders.

Niagara Falls has inspired artists for centuries. English painter William H. Bartlett, who visited here in the mid-1830s, noted that "you may dream of Niagara, but words will never describe it to you." And cynics have taken their own stab at Niagara Falls, calling it everything from "water on the rocks" to "the second major disappointment of American married life" (Oscar Wilde). The thundering cascades were dramatically immortalized by Hollywood in 1953, when Marilyn Monroe starred as a steamy siren, luring her jealous husband down to the crashing waters in the film Niagara.

The malls, amusement parks, hotels, tacky souvenir shops, and flashy wax museums that surround the falls today attest to the region's maturation into a major tourist attraction. But despite the hordes of visitors jostling unceremoniously for the best photographic vantage point, the astounding beauty of the falls remains undiminished, and unending.