Maid of the Mist I and II had been assembled at the water's edge. Maid of the Mist III, however, made a much more dramatic debut. Built in Wheatley, Ontario, the boat traveled up Lake Erie to Chippawa, then was hauled on a 100-ton flatbed truck the last 3.5 miles to Niagara Falls. On June 13, 1972, she was lowered - all in one piece - over the gorge to the landing below.
It was a delicate process monitored by thousands of fascinated tourists. Unable to see what they were doing, the crane operators relied on two-way radio signals from a crew stationed below. Inch by painstaking inch, they lowered the 65-ton boat to a truck waiting 60 feet down. This first step alone absorbed more than an hour.
The Maid then crept down the steep service road. At an appointed spot upstream from the docks, more giant cranes slid her carefully to the water's edge. As newspapers of the day exclaimed, Maid III was the largest known object ever to arrive in this manner at the river's edge. The feat was repeated when Maid IV, even bigger at 72 feet, was launched in 1976.
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