Location: Central Niagara County, south of the Village of Gasport in Royalton Ravine
Park, a Niagara County Park.
From Route 31 just south of the Village of Gasport turn south on to Main Street. At the crest of the hill Main Street becomes Gasport Road. The entrance to Royalton Ravine Park is to your right (west) about 1,000 feet after cresting the hill.
Royalton Ravine Park covers an area of 157 acres, and was established in 1969. In addition to Norton’s Falls, the park has a stand of 100 year-old maple and oak trees, two ponds, wildflowers, baseball fields, and picnic areas. The wildflowers are abundant in the wooded areas of the park in mid-May. Some are rare and protected by law. Please don't pick them. Doing so is illegal, and it deprives others of seeing their beauty. Norton’s Falls is at its best in the early spring, as the East Branch of Eighteenmile Creek usually dries to a trickle in midsummer.
From the parking lot, near Gasport Road, walk to the west along a dirt road, past the picnic shelters, and along the top of an earthen dam, which has a pond on its southern side. A short distance past the pond you will come to the edge of the woods. A trail, marked by orange paint blazes, enters the woods, and in roughly 900 feet connects with a yellow blazed trail that leads to the left (southwest). Follow the yellow trail as it descends steeply into the ravine.
At the bottom of the ravine you will come to a 138-foot long suspension bridge that crosses the East Branch of Eighteenmile Creek. The bridge is 3 feet above the creek, and bounces up and down rhythmically as you walk across. After crossing the bridge, continue along the bottom of the ravine on the yellow trail, passing through an area that is often wet and muddy. In a short distance there will be a blue trail that branches off to the left. Follow this blue trail as it climbs steeply out of the ravine. Shortly, you will come to a clearing where there are three or four old building foundations off to your right. A little way farther along the trail, to your left, there is a short unmarked trail that leads you to the crest of Norton’s Falls. Please use caution in this area.
Norton’s Falls is 24 feet high, and has a crest that is 4 feet wide. The falls is actually more of a moderately sloping cascade that faces to the east. There is a short break near the base, after which the creek falls almost vertically into a shallow plunge pool. Downstream of the falls the creek bed is littered with a lot of good sized dolostone boulders. The face of the falls is Rochester shale.
An 1861 map of the region shows a sawmill in this area. It was at one point owned by Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, who later became the first woman to be permitted to practice law before the U. S. supreme court in 1879 and was the first woman to officially run for President of the United States in 1884. An old postcard, circa early 1900s, shows the falls with a bridge above it. The caption on the postcard reads “The Falls at Norton’s Glen, Gasport, N.Y.” The old bridge abutments are still there. How the glen and falls came to be named “Norton’s” is unknown.
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