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Maid of the Mist

boat tour

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ981249 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Maid of the Mist is a sightseeing boat tour of Niagara Falls, New York, US. The tour starts and ends on the American side of the falls, crossing briefly into Canada during a portion of the trip.

James V. Glynn was chairman and chief executive officer of Maid of the Mist Corp. He joined Maid of the Mist in 1950 as a ticket seller and purchased the company in 1971. He died in 2025.

There have been sightseeing boats at Niagara since 1846. Steam-powered boats were replaced by diesel-powered craft in 1955. All were named Maid of the Mist until 2020, when company president Christopher M. Glynn introduced two new boats powered by lithium-ion battery-powered electric motors; these were named James V. Glynn, after the CEO; and Nikola Tesla, for the engineer who developed a type of alternating current (AC) motor. Tesla's patents were licensed by George Westinghouse, whose company later won the bid to build the first AC power plant at Niagara Falls.

The name, Maid of the Mist, could be a reference to the Iroquois myth of Lelawala.

History

The United States

The original Maid of the Mist was built at a landing near Niagara Falls on the American side of the border.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Maid of the Mist” as boat tour. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Maid, Mist and boat.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 1971, 2025, 1846—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1846. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Maid, Mist and boat providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Maid of the Mist”, the useful work is to connect “boat tour” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q981249. Authority coordinates are 43.087, -79.068. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 1971, 2025 and 1846.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Maid of the Mist”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Maid of the Mist primary sources, Maid of the Mist archive and Maid research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Maid of the Mist” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.