Niagara Falls: Wonder and Weirdness

Niagara Falls has always been a wonder of nature — but it’s also been a wonder of weirdness. For two centuries, people haven’t just come to marvel at the roaring cataract; they’ve come to be entertained, surprised, and sometimes bewildered by what they found along the way.

Before modern museums, collectors filled “cabinets of curiosities” with shells, gems, taxidermy, and treasures from around the world — part science, part spectacle, and often tied to colonial trade. They were meant to capture the whole universe in a single room.

Take Thomas Barnett, the English taxidermist who, in 1827, opened what would become Canada’s oldest museum right at the brink of the Horseshoe Falls. His first collection was housed in an old brewery, but soon he built larger halls along The Front, the busy tourist strip above the cataract. A guidebook from 1835 praised the place as being “calculated to delight the eye, improve the understanding and mend the heart.”

Inside, visitors found an astonishing mix: thousands of taxidermied animals, Native relics, minerals, fossils, and curiosities from around the world. Barnett mounted everything he could get his hands on — from three-eyed pigs and two-headed calves to beloved pets. Most famous of all was Skipper, his own two-legged dog, who scooted happily around town in a wheeled cart before being preserved for display.

But Barnett also thought big. In 1854, his son Sydney traveled to Egypt three times, returning with mummies and ancient artifacts that transformed the museum into an international sensation. For more than 140 years, one of those mummies sat in Niagara Falls unnoticed — until scholars later identified it as none other than Pharaoh Ramesses I, the founding king of Egypt’s 19th dynasty. Astonishingly, a king of Egypt had once been a sideshow curiosity at the Falls. (He was finally returned to Egypt in 2003 with ceremony and honor.)

Barnett’s flair for the spectacular didn’t stop there. In 1872, Sydney tried to stage a Grand Buffalo Hunt with “Wild Bill” Hickok as master of ceremonies. Buffalo Bill Cody was supposed to bring Pawnee performers, but U.S. officials refused to let them leave the reservation. The show went on anyway, with Tuscarora and Cayuga locals, but the whole thing collapsed — sick animals, poor planning, and disappointed crowds. Niagara’s first Wild West show became one of its strangest flops.

Meanwhile, the competition was brutal. Niagara’s strip — known as The Front, later nicknamed the “Den of Forty Thieves” — was crowded with wax museums, curiosity halls, and hustlers promising “the best view of the Falls.” Rival entrepreneurs fought dirty: blocking stairways, throwing rocks, undercutting prices. Barnett held on as long as he could, even building a grand museum in 1858 said to have cost $150,000. But in 1868, debt forced him to auction off his life’s work. His bitter rival Saul Davis snapped it up, ending Barnett’s reign.

The museum staggered on under different owners for more than a century, adding whale skeletons, mastodon bones, Japanese relics, sequoia tree sections, and even swapping artifacts with P.T. Barnum. But the magic faded. In 1999, the last collection was sold to Toronto dealer Billy Jamieson. Some of Barnett’s treasures, including Skipper the dog, are now preserved at the Niagara Falls History Museum.

And then there was Tugby’s. If Barnett was the professor, Tugby’s Bazaar was the carnival. A dusty, crowded, and sometimes unsettling shop of seashells, wax figures, and odd trinkets, it felt like part flea market, part haunted house. Tourists laughed, shivered, and shopped — and they remembered it for the rest of their lives.

Today, Tugby’s is gone, Barnett’s mummies are back in Egypt, and The Front has become Clifton Hill — glowing with neon arcades, haunted houses, and attractions that carry forward the same playful tradition, only brighter and safer.

Because the truth is, Niagara Falls has never just been about the water. It’s been about the spectacle — about leaving with a story you’ll tell for years. Niagara has always been a bit weird, and that’s ok too.

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Engraving from Ferrante Imperato's Dell'Historia Naturale, 1599. Before modern museums, collectors filled “cabinets of curiosities” with shells, gems, taxidermy, and treasures from around the world — part science, part spectacle, and often tied to colonial trade. They were meant to capture the whole universe in a single room. 🌍🔮 #CabinetOfCuriosities #MuseumHistory #WeirdHistory #WorldMadeWondrous

Thomas Barnett

Barnett’s treasures, including Skipper the dog, are now preserved at the Niagara Falls History Museum.