Niagara Falls State Park opened in 1885, making it the oldest state park in the United States — older than Yosemite's state designation and born of a campaign to tear down the mills and fences that had walled off the gorge. The movement was called Free Niagara. Frederick Law Olmsted, who had already laid out Central Park, drew the plan. His instruction was restraint: no monuments, no ornamental gardens, only paths that lead a person to water and then get out of the way. That principle still governs the grounds at 332 Prospect St, Niagara Falls, NY 14303, where entry costs 0 USD. The geology is younger than the park is old in relative terms. Roughly 12,000 years ago, retreating glaciers opened the Niagara River between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The river met a shelf of hard Lockport dolostone laid over softer shale. Water undercut the shale, the cap collapsed, and the crest walked upstream — seven miles of retreat to its present position at the Horseshoe. Erosion once ran at more than three feet per year. Diversion for hydroelectric power has slowed it to roughly one foot per decade. Three cataracts share the name. Horseshoe Falls carries about ninety percent of the flow. American Falls and the slender Bridal Veil are separated by Luna Island, reachable on foot from Goat Island, which sits mid-river inside the park boundary. Prospect Point stands at the American brink; the Observation Tower cantilevers over the gorge toward the Rainbow Bridge and the Canadian shoreline beyond. A nyc to niagara falls one day trip covers roughly 400 miles in each direction, which explains why nearly every coach departs before dawn. What the park protects is not only scenery but access. Nikola Tesla's alternating-current system was proven here in 1895 at the Edward Dean Adams Station, and the falls became the first place on earth where large-scale hydroelectricity was transmitted to a distant city. Buffalo received that current twenty-six miles away. The park's paths, its cliff-edge railings, its Cave of the Winds stairways down toward Bridal Veil — all descend from Olmsted's argument that a natural wonder in private hands is a wonder lost. Modern nyc to niagara falls one day trip tours inherit that logic. They deliver visitors to a public shoreline rather than a paid viewing platform, and the gates never close: the park is open 00:00–23:59, seven days a week. Fees apply only to specific attractions and to parking. The water, the mist, the sound at the brink — those remain free, as the 1885 legislature intended.