It was 1892 when William T. Love proposed connecting the upper and lower Niagara River by digging a canal six to seven miles long. He had felt that by digging a short canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers, power could be generated cheaply to fuel the industry and homes of his would-be model city. However, his proposal was abandoned after an economic depression, leaving behind a partially dug section of the canal, sixty feet wide and three thousand feet long.

In the 1920s the canal was turned into a municipal and industrial chemical dumpsite. Following the various wastes and chemical toxins left in the canal, in 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company had covered the canal with earth and sold it to the city for cheap. Considering the value of the cost, it was a very bad buy.

In the late 1950s, approximately 100 homes and a school was built at the site.

On the first day of August, 1978, the lead paragraph of a front-page story in the New York Times read:

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y.--Twenty five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the Love Canal here as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.

Months after the incident in the article, Love Canal itself exploded, which was triggered by a record amount of rainfall. After the explosion, leaching of the chemicals had began, "Corroding waste-disposal drums could be seen breaking up through the grounds of backyards. Trees and gardens were turning black and dying. One entire swimming pool had been had been popped up from its foundation, afloat now on a small sea of chemicals. Puddles of noxious substances were pointed out to me by the residents. Some of these puddles were in their yards, some were in their basements, others yet were on the school grounds. Everywhere the air had a faint, choking smell. Children returned from play with burns on their hands and faces."

 After the incidents of leaching and chemical pollution in the area, there was a very disturbingly high amount of birth defects and miscarriages among the women residing in the Love Canal area. "The New York State Health Department is continuing an investigation into a disturbingly high rate of miscarriages, along with five birth-defect cases detected thus far in the area." A large percentage of people in Love Canal are also being closely observed because of detected high white-blood-cell counts, a possible precursor of leukemia.