Some news!

The names of the three iconic waterfalls on the Genesee River in Rochester have now been officially added to federal maps and records, ending an oversight dating back almost 130 years.

The names we all know them by – High Falls, Middle Falls and Lower Falls – were never included on U.S. Geological Survey maps or the official database of American place names until now.

Genesee RiverWatch, the Rochester nonprofit whose mission includes advocating for the river, raised the issue earlier this year and asked the city of Rochester to join in a request to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names that the waterfalls be given their commonly used names.

After Rochester City’s Council unanimously passed a resolution on May 20 supporting the request, Mayor Malik D. Evans presented Genesee RiverWatch with a proclamation at our annual Genesee River Basin Summit on May 22 that endorsed the action.

Genesee RiverWatch filed the necessary paperwork with federal officials that same day.

U.S. Rep. Joseph Morelle, whose district includes the portion of the Genesee in Monroe County, also urged the federal board to act.

The board, a federal inter-agency body charged with maintaining uniformity in the use of place names in the United States, entered the three waterfall names into the record several days ago.

Our 2024 Genesee River Basin Summit featured a second mayoral proclamation from Mayor Evans, one in which the city honored RiverWatch and its predecessor organization for 50 years of service to the Rochester community. As Evans noted, Genesee RiverWatch grew out of the Center for Environmental Information, an influential environmental educational group that was founded in Rochester in 1974.

Lower Falls near the Driving Park Bridge and Middle Falls at the foot of Brewer Street have been identified by those names since European Americans settled the area in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The southernmost of the three cataracts, at the edge of downtown Rochester, was known as Upper Falls until 1990, when city officials re-branded it as High Falls. That name has been in common usage since that time.

The first U.S. Geological Survey map of the Rochester area, produced in 1895, identified two of the Rochester cataracts only as “Falls” and omitted the third entirely. USGS officials have not been able to explain why its surveyors never recorded the names of the waterfalls.

“Place names anchor us to our community and its history. As advocates for the river, Genesee RiverWatch felt it important that the names of these beautiful waterfalls be reflected on federal maps and records. We were most pleased that the city of Rochester and Representative Morelle joined us in seeing that these waterfalls’ good names were finally memorialized,” said Steve Orr, a board member of Genesee RiverWatch.

Orr revealed the naming oversight in a story in the Democrat and Chronicle in 2018 and was told the matter would be addressed. After leaving the paper and joining RiverWatch, he learned the oversight hadn’t been corrected and brought the issue to the group’s board for action.