Eight million tourists visit Niagara Falls annually, according to the people who run the Niagara Falls State Park. It is ranked as a Top 10 tourist destination in America by prestigious sources including Forbes magazine and Yahoo.
Niagara Falls is the only place in the world that gets millions of tourists and enjoys high levels of poverty.
Niagara Falls' downtown is adjacent to the state park, and passing tourists often comment on the city's striking resemblance to a ghost town, while across the river appears a boom town with the same name. It can be quite pleasant to be the butt of strangers' jokes.
The good people who run the state park worked successfully to help create the ghost town appearance of Niagara Falls by their policy of routing tourists -- through signage, mapping and information centers -- to veer away from the downtown business district and head directly to the state park. The state park's goal is to get tourists to spend money on products and services sold inside the park at souvenir stores, restaurants, parking lots and attractions.
Thankfully for the profitability of the state park, the people outside the park -- with their poverty and high taxes -- cannot afford to have many businesses that offer tourists much of anything to do. Tourists therefore enjoyably spend their money in the park and do not have to worry that they are missing out on something exciting outside the park in Niagara Falls, N.Y. When tourists leave the park, they can go directly to Niagara Falls, Ont., which has numerous wonderful attractions.
What has been accomplished is a truly synergistic, binational effort between the Niagara Falls State Park and the smart businesspeople of Ontario.
The good leaders of Niagara Falls, N.Y,. should be commended for helping to lead a community willing to sacrifice their own welfare and profits to make strangers in Albany and Niagara Falls, Ont., wealthier.
The people who manage the park for Albany are pleased to advertise that they keep the state park in the tradition of its original designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the park with strict prohibitions against business being conducted inside the park, in order to keep the park entirely green and natural to help capture the primal wonder of the falls without the stain of commerciality on top of it.
Olmsted planned this would enrich the people of Niagara Falls, who could operate local businesses. They would become prosperous, while the state park remained natural and pristine.
The park management paved over much of the green in the park for use as a paid parking lot, multiple restaurants and souvenir stores. The good state park people nevertheless honor Olmsted by selling his picture on postcards in the park he designed but would not recognize if he came back from the dead to visit it.
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