Workers In The Mist
CSEA members make it easy for tourists to enjoy the wonders of Niagara Falls.
By Clyde Weiss
NIAGARA FALLS, NEW YORK
An ice-cold mist clings to the faces and orange raincoats of six state-park service workers as they hammer wet nails into slippery lumber. They're careful — less because they might hit a thumb than because they could accidentally slip and plunge into the churning white water directly beneath them.
These men, all members of Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000, are building a pair of wooden catwalks and decks on the rocks at the base of the 176-foot-tall Bridal Veil Falls, one of three that form the great natural tourist attraction known as Niagara Falls.
CSEA Local 104 represents about 170 year-round employees — and another 300 to 500 seasonal employees — at Niagara Reservation State Park, the oldest state park in the United States. They maintain miles of trails, operate tollbooths, mow lawns and do myriad other tasks. The most unusual job is the annual construction of a boardwalk for the popular "Cave of the Winds" tour.
The original "cave," a walkway that passed behind the falls, no longer exists. Since the roof collapsed in 1920, visitors have had to take an elevator 17 stories down through the Niagara Escarpment and out onto a wooden footpath leading to two viewing decks. They must be built each spring and torn down the following winter before cascading ice destroys them.
Seeing the falls from the top is obviously spectacular, but feeling the falls from its base is what makes this $6 tour so memorable.
EASY DOES IT. As herring gulls swarm nearby, park service worker Michael Boyd carries a 14-foot-long board over his shoulder as he makes his way toward the end of the lower deck. In warm weather, the deck can get so slippery from algae growth that tourists must wear special moccasins to avoid losing their balance.
But at this point it's still early spring, and the spray from the falls numbs the hands. So the crew wear gloves and remain on the job only a few hours at a time. It's a "one-of-a-kind type of job," says Boyd, a self-described "riverman" who wears a broad smile as he speaks of his work at the falls. "How many structures are built at the base of a waterfall?"
Boyd began working here for the concessionaires three decades ago, then carried wood for the building crew. Now he's on the crew himself, sometimes wading in 35-degree water while he and the others assemble the deck footings. Because rocks shift from year to year, nothing can be pre-built — everything is cut on site to fit. The work takes four to six weeks, depending on the weather, and it's dangerous. Yet they work without a safety harness or rope.
"In the event you do fall into the water and start getting rolled around in the rapids, you don't want a rope that can get wrapped around your neck or arms," Boyd explains. Tied to a rope, "the force of the water will hold you so you can't get loose."
No serious injuries have occurred so far. "We slip and fall, but it's your pride that gets hurt more than anything else," says Brendan Walsh, who at age 26 already has put in 11 years at the falls. But the crew doesn't tempt fate. On each trip to and from the project, they carry a piece of wood, a tool — something — for good luck. Otherwise, Walsh cautions, "The gorge will get you."
NOT FOR THE MONEY. Daniel O'Grady began working here four years ago, handing out raincoats to the tourists. Then management asked him to help build the bridge. He didn't need to be asked twice.
"I'm definitely not there for the money," he declares. "A lot of people around here, like myself, have a spiritual connection with the falls and the river. I've lived here all my life, and they've always been a part of me."
Travis Saturley used to be a partner in a company that made hockey equipment. Now, for the second time, he's helping to build the Cave of the Winds deck, and the work still holds its charm. "When we walk out of here at the end of the day, covered in dirt and slime, we feel like the astronauts walking off of one of the Apollo spaceships. We feel we're pretty cool working down here building these decks in the rapids. When you get done at the end of the day, you're holding your head up" — with pride.
ON THE TRAIL. Although the 400-acre Niagara Reservation State Park is known worldwide for its falls, the park also boasts miles of trails that must be kept clear of rocks and other debris. That task, too, falls to members of CSEA.
"We've added three to four miles of trail and improved close to 12," says Gary Durys. A former contractor who has been coming into the gorge since he was a teenager, Durys has found his ideal job here. Rolling and lifting rocks, logs and other debris off the trail is a never-ending task once the winter ice melts.
"Geologically, it's pretty unstable," Durys says of the Niagara River gorge. "Rocks are always falling — it's worst in the spring because you have the freeze from the winter and then the thaw."
