🌊 The Hill Family: Niagara’s Daredevil Dynasty 🌊
William “Red” Hill Jr. preparing for the rapids in the steel barrel first used by his legendary father.
When you stand on the edge of Niagara, you’re standing in their story. The roar you hear, the mist on your skin—that was the soundtrack of William “Red” Hill Sr.’s life.
William “Red” Hill Sr. was born (1888) and raised in Niagara Falls, Ontario, just steps from the river’s edge. From boyhood, he spent nearly every day along the banks, studying the currents, tossing sticks and cans over the brink, and watching how the river swallowed and released them below. That lifelong obsession with the water’s power gave him an unmatched knowledge of the Falls and the treacherous rapids beneath them.
Hill wasn’t just a daredevil. He was a soldier, a rescuer, and the man credited with pulling 177 bodies from the river and saving 28 souls who would have otherwise been lost to the current. During the Ice Bridge disaster of 1912, he dragged a teenage boy to safety as the frozen Niagara shattered beneath them. During the famous Niagara Scow incident of 1918, he crept hand-over-hand across a rope over the raging river to save two men pinned above the Horseshoe Falls.
Hill’s reputation as a riverman was cemented in 1911 when Bobby Leach became only the second person in history to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. When Leach’s steel vessel was recovered, it was Hill who pulled him—battered but alive—from the barrel. A decade later, when Leach attempted to swim the Niagara Gorge and nearly drowned, it was Hill again who plunged into the current and hauled the daredevil to safety. The two men’s names became forever linked, their rivalry and respect a part of Niagara lore.
But Hill’s legend wasn’t built only on rescues. He built 600-pound steel barrels and rode the Whirlpool Rapids in front of crowds of 25,000. He faced the river head-on, not for money or fame—but because he belonged to it.
During Prohibition, Niagara’s rivermen—including Red Hill—found steady income smuggling liquor across the mile-wide river, a risky trade marked by shootouts and Coast Guard chases. Hill also earned $5 for each body he recovered, claiming to have pulled 177 “floaters” from the water in his lifetime. His reputation drew bootleggers, stuntmen, and even Harry Houdini, who sought Hill’s expertise while filming The Man From Beyond. After hearing Hill’s cautionary advice, Houdini abandoned the idea of attempting a stunt over the Falls.
William “Red” Hill Sr.
Red Hill’s death in 1942 didn’t end the story. His sons picked up his barrels, literally. Red Jr., Corky, Wesley, and Major Hill turned the Niagara Gorge into a family proving ground. They shot the rapids, swam the river, and tried to carve their own names into the mist. And when the river called for something bigger—when the last unclaimed stunt, the plunge over Horseshoe Falls, loomed—Red Jr. answered.
On August 5, 1951, in front of hundreds of thousands, Red Jr. climbed into a strange contraption lashed together with inner tubes and fishnet and called it “The Thing.” His father had always said a barrel built of rubber could survive the drop. Jr. believed him. The crowd watched as The Thing bobbed into the current and disappeared over the 167-foot cataract.
Minutes later, the river gave its answer. Pieces of the vessel surfaced. Then his shoes. The next day, his body washed up in the exact spot rivermen knew to look. The Hill family’s legacy had been sealed in tragedy and mist.
Their story has echoed far beyond Niagara. The Hill family has been featured in a classic episode of This American Lifeand in the powerful Niagara Falls Daredevil Museum podcast by Theodore Carter, whose episodes Red Hill and The Hill Family trace their triumphs and tragedies in vivid detail.
William “Red” Hill Sr.