The “Smoke” of Niagara Falls — Reaching the Skies, Seen from 20 Miles Away
Yes — on a clear day you can see the smoke, the rising mist of Niagara Falls, from over twenty miles away, deep into Ontario and beyond Buffalo to the South. Long before neon lights and paved highways, travelers spoke of the “smoke of Niagara” — the vast white cloud that rises where the river plunges into the gorge. They said it reached the skies and could be seen from afar, a beacon in the landscape.
In 1678, Father Louis Hennepin published one of the earliest European accounts of the Falls. He wrote of its “prodigious cadence of water” and of the mist and roar that could be heard and seen at an immense distance, claiming it might carry more than fifteen leagues away — over forty miles. To Hennepin, Niagara was not only a cataract of water but a signal of untamed power, a natural wonder that announced itself long before one arrived at its brink.
By the nineteenth century, observers often turned to biblical language to frame Niagara’s grandeur. The verse from Exodus 13:21–22—“a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night”—echoed in their minds when witnessing the Falls: by day, a soaring column of mist; by night, lit by moon or lantern, a kind of glowing flame in the sky.
But we don’t need metaphor to feel its power. As John Grew, an early traveler, noted in 1803:
“The spray of the water is so great that it forms a kind of clouds above this abyss, and these are seen even at the time when the sun is shining brightly at midday.”
Edward Hicks’s famed 1825 painting The Falls of Niagara is framed by Alexander Wilson’s poem, which describes the Falls’ unyielding force.
“Above, below, where’er the astonished eye / Turns to behold, new opening wonders lie, … Rises on our view amid a crashing roar.”
Edward Hicks, a Quaker minister and folk painter, first saw Niagara Falls in 1819 during a missionary journey through upstate New York. His later painting of the Canadian side was not sketched on site but adapted from an engraving in an 1822 map of North America. Along the riverbank he added emblematic animals — moose, beaver, rattlesnake, and eagle — familiar Euro-American symbols of the “New World.” A former sign painter, Hicks ringed the canvas with a verse by poet Alexander Wilson, using the words as both frame and guide. Together, text and image transformed the Falls into more than a landscape: a religious vision, a visible sign of God’s greatness in creation.
For the Haudenosaunee, the people of this land, the mist was never metaphor. It was alive — a spirit presence dancing above the cataract, part of the living power of the Falls that shaped their stories and ceremonies. To European visitors it was spectacle; to the Haudenosaunee, it was a force woven into their world.
Even today, you can stand at Niagara and feel it: the cool mist on your skin, the rainbows arcing across shifting veils, the endless roar carrying on the wind. From Buffalo’s horizon to the brink of the Falls, the “smoke” remains a signal of wonder.
Come see it for yourself with Go Niagara Tours — experience what explorers, poets, musicians, and generations of travelers could never forget.
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The smoke of the Falls from a distance.