# 699 - 1931 25c Niagara Falls, blue green

Niagara Falls State Park

Native Americans of the Neutral Nation lived in the area around the falls before the arrival of Europeans in the 1600s.  Robert de La Salle built Fort Conti at the mouth of the Niagara River and a Belgian priest was the first known European to see the falls. . 

The situation at the falls was so dire, it was used as one of the arguments for establishing Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872.  Yellowstone supporters argued that if the area wasn’t protected, it could suffer the same misuse as Niagara Falls. 

The Most Perfect U.S. Stamps?

The Series of 1926-31 features the historic designs and patriotic symbolism of the Series of 1922.  However, the new series was printed on a rotary intaglio press, saving time and money as it was printed in continuous rolls.   The rolls were then threaded into a perforator, pulled through the machine under high tension, and perforated horizontally and vertically in a single step.  A 10-gauge perforation had been the standard used to prevent the paper from tearing during production.   To overcome complaints that stamps perforated 10 gauge were hard to separate, a quantity of the 2¢ stamps (U.S. #634, the first Series of 1926-31 denomination to be issued) were given experimental perforations of 11 x 101/2. 

The experiment was a success – the stamps were sturdy enough to withstand the production process yet easy to separate for postal use.  The Bureau of Engraving and Printing applied the compound perforations to the entire Series of 1926-31.  In fact, the compound perforation stamps were so successful the format was used for the next 10 years, including the 1938 Presidential and 1954 Liberty Series.