Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: Reviving Niagara

Problem:

The first years of my memory are of Niagara Falls. We lived on Orchard Parkway in a tiny second-floor house apartment. And as I grew up in the surrounding area, I learned to think of my hometown as the honeymoon and suicide capital of the world.

I grew up with daredevils risking life, limb, and the lives and limbs of their rescuers, by plummeting in various contraptions over the Horseshoe Falls. I saw news reports of poor fools who fell and drown to their deaths on kayaks and jet-skis as they tried to conquer the cataracts. I watched national television coverage of the lawsuits connected to Love Canal, a neighborhood that was the site of one of the worst toxic-waste-dumping scandals in American history.

My first job, as a bakery assistant, was in Niagara Falls at the headquarters of Di Camillo Bakery, a family business still thriving in this city. And I watched as department stores and jewelry stores and restaurants evaporated from Main Street, turning the road into an assortment of seedy bars, adult novelty stores, and boarded up buildings, each empty as the pockets of the homeless wandering the city. And I watched as the factories closed their doors, and added good, hard-working souls to the unemployment lines– ¦.

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Make Progress:

But I also grew up next to a place where people teem to see one the natural wonders of the world. And I grew up in an area where my relatives worked the bluest-collar of jobs, but managed to put lasagna on the table (we're good Italian-Americans, after all). And I grew up where my grandfather landed after traveling the Atlantic to move to America, the same city where my father was raised and remained, the same city where my sister got married. And I grew up next to one of the marvels of electrical science, the Niagara Power Project.

And so I believe in this place. And I love this place. And it's time we all helped this treasure of not just New York, but of America, and not just of America, but of the world. We're ready, if you are, to make progress in Niagara Falls.

• Buy
• Sign
• Give
• E-mail
• Eat

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Editor’s Note: Below you’ll find photos of some of our favorite locations in the city of Niagara Falls.

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The Little Italy neighborhood and business district.

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The genius that is the Niagara Power Project. To learn more about it, click here.

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Di Camillo Bakery, where they make the best Italian bread you’ll ever eat.

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The Niagara River in autumn (if it wasn’t obvious from, you know, the leaves).

Reviving Niagara: Sign

Sign:

This one might be a little confusing for those of you reading in Texas or Taiwan, but stay with us here because we know that, as progressives, you believe in being a good steward to the environment.

The Robert Moses Parkway is a small roadway in Western New York. A portion of it — which stretches from Lewiston to Niagara Falls — has been changed from a four-lane highway into a two-lane 40-miles-per-hour road. This section is barely used. It's rundown. To call it “maintained– would be insulting to the word “maintained.– It's ugly. It's all-but useless since there are plenty of other ways to get from Niagara Falls to Lewiston and back.

One of the main reasons folks come the American side of Niagara Falls is because of the enormous state parks. Ecotourism best describes the hundreds of thousands of travelers to this area. So an area organization, Niagara Heritage Partnership, has started a petition to remove 6.5 miles of the Robert Moses Parkway and turn it into a bike path and a hiking trail with socially responsible development. (To learn more about the Robert Moses and the Niagara Heritage Partnership, click this sentence.) Basically, they'd like to return the area to its more natural state, and attract even more folks interested in the environmental beauty of the Niagara region. In addition, removing the parkway would reroute folks through areas of the city that could use some rerouted folks. There’s an added conservation benefit: since the roads need to be salted come the frigid Western New York winters, this would reduce runoff into the Niagara Gorge.

So, all you've got to do, is electronically sign the petition that they've set up online (just click this sentence). Right now, they've got 69 organizations supporting their proposal, including the Sierra Club, Buffalo Audubon Society, Niagara Frontier Wildlife Habitat Council, and 22 different block clubs of the city of Niagara Falls. They have over 2,000 signatures from concerned and conscientious citizens. Now all they need is you.

Reviving Niagara: E-mail

E-mail:

We hemmed and hawed. We confabbed and powwowed amongst our entire staff. There were moments of hullabaloo and others of brouhaha. And we think we've got the best minute-for-minute way that folks can help boost tourism to Niagara Falls (excluding, of course, cajoling your best buds and extended family to hop a flight or maybe take a road trip our way). Below you'll find a letter to the editor that we encourage you to alter depending on your facts, feelings and location[1], then copy, paste, and mass-email the sucker to the following travel magazines:

• National Geographic Magazine: ngsforum@nationalgeographic.com
• National Geographic Traveler Magazine: traveler@nationalgeographic.com
• National Geographic Adventure Magazine: adventure@ngs.org
• Road & Travel Magazine: editor@roadandtravel.com
• World Hum: tips@worldhum.com
• Love Tripper: editors@lovetripper.com
• Travel-Travel-Travel: editor@travel-travel-travel.com
• CNN Traveler: dan.hayes@ink-publishing.com
• Vacations Magazine: contact@VacationsMagazine.com
• Family Fun Magazine: letters.familyfun@disney.com

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Dear Editor:

I recently visited Niagara Falls, New York, and I left stunned by the beauty on display on the American side of this natural wonder of the world. While the Canadian side boasted kitschy pseudo-museums, trinket stores, and family unfriendly gentlemen's clubs, the American side focuses on the gorgeous environment through the state parks, a helicopter ride, Terrapin Point, the Flight of Angels balloon ride, Cave of the Winds, Maid of the Mist, Niagara Falls Observation Tower, and Prospect Point. On the American side, I was able to stand just feet away from all three of the cataracts that together make Niagara Falls. I also hiked down to Devil's Hole State Park to watch the Class 5 rapids stampeding through the gorge, a breathtaking site in and of itself.

I'm asking that you write an article about this location, encouraging your readers to make a trip to the side of the Falls most suited for families, honeymooners, eco-tourists, and anyone who’s never stood right next to the mighty Niagara.

Sincerely,

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Instead of entering all the addresses into the email as you normally would do, we recommend placing one address in the address bar, and adding the rest as BCC, also known as “blind carbon copy.” You might also send a variation of the letter to your newspaper of choice (you can find a complete listing of newspapers by clicking here). But if you could do us a favor: please don’t send these letters to the good folks at the Niagara Gazette, Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, Tonawanda News, The Journal-Register, The Grand Island Record, or The Buffalo News. We're pretty sure they know about the grandeur of the Falls. Thanks.

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Editor’s Note: You can contact Travel and Leisure by clicking this sentence.

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[1] If this is going to work, we really need folks to personalize the letter, if only a smidgen (and yes, we just wrote the word “smidgen– ). Obviously, if you live in the Niagara area, then you can center the letter around that fact.