Will Niagara Falls ever disappear?

Short answer: No, not in any timeframe you or your grandkids need to worry about. The falls erode about 1 foot per year on average, but that rate has slowed way down thanks to human engineering. We’ve been diverting water for hydro power since the 1950s, which actually reduces the erosion. The Horseshoe Falls (the big one on the Canadian side) will eventually eat its way upstream toward Lake Erie, but that’s a geological process taking tens of thousands of years. The American Falls are basically a rock pile that could collapse into a rubble slope someday, but again, not in our lifetime.

What will actually happen is the falls will keep changing shape. The Niagara Gorge has already retreated about 7 miles from Lewiston, NY to where it is now over the last 12,000 years. In 1969, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers actually shut off the American Falls to study erosion and bolt together the rock face. They decided it wasn’t worth the billions to fully stabilize it. So no, the falls aren’t vanishing—they’re just slowly moving. If you want to see them before they’re a gentle rapids, you’ve got about 50,000 years to plan your trip.