LEWISTON, N.Y. — Waterfalls, they can be mesmerizing, captivating and in some cases breathtaking. For Scott Ensminger of North Tonawanda, they're even more than that, they're his obsession.
"They're cool, every one is different, kind of like snowflakes. There's no two of them that are perfectly identical," Ensminger said.
For the better part of four decades, Ensminger has been visiting, documenting and cataloging the waterfalls of Western New York.
"I used to go to Niagara Falls quite a bit, but it became too commercialized for me, so I started looking for ones out in the woods that nobody visits anymore, in a more natural state."
That was in the 1980's. In 1991 Ensminger initiated the Western New York Waterfall Survey to catalog all of the falls in the western half of New York State. To qualify for the survey a waterfall must have a vertical drop of at least 5 feet and the stream has to flow throughout the year.
When he started his research the State Department of Environmental Conservation listed 65 waterfalls in the entire state. To date, the website Ensminger launched in 1998 lists 1,148 waterfalls in just the western half of the state.
The website includes more than just stats, maps and pictures. Ensminger also documents the history of many of the falls. He says it is the result of years of hard work and a lot of digging.
"Some people let me know about them, I have collected old postcards, topographic maps and write to historians," Ensminger said.
Ensminger reached out to us, hoping that he might be able to get his hands on some pictures of one waterfall in particular, in its original, natural state, before it was rerouted. The only picture he could find of Fish Creek Falls dates back to the early 1960's. It is an image that still shows it cascading over the escarpment in Lewiston, but rerouted a little more than half way down to make way for the now-defunct Niagara Gorge Rail Line.
"Fish Creek used to plunge over the top of the escarpment and drop 306 feet and they built the Robert Moses (Expressway) and put it into a big pipe and it channeled all underground so nobody can see the falls," Ensminger said.
The creek runs through the Niagara Falls Country Club, before pouring into the culvert.
On his website, Ensminger has listed everything from the towering 500-foot Cinderella Cascade in Wyoming County, to Glen Falls' 27 feet of falling water in Williamsville; the lower falls at Letchworth, to South Buffalo's Caz Park; Aunt Sarah's Falls in Schuyler County, to the falls at Clarendon in Orleans County.
Ensminger has covered hundreds of waterfalls, and thousands of miles, and has even authored a dozen guides and books, trying to share his compulsion for cataracts.
RELATED VIDEO: