On hot holidays, like July 3, 2020, locals head to The Log Cabin and the Falls. You either spectate from a perch on the porch, patio, or the rocky bed of Tonawanda Creek, or you jump right in. This ritualistic frivolity occasionally raises concerns or hackles, and the authorities are called. Like every week. The sheriff’s department, so we are informed by the indefatigable staff of The Batavian, has a special rig and rope team at the ready (for dispatches like this: “Man down in Indian Falls, bleeding from the head, water rescuers called.”). On July 3, before your correspondent arrived at the scene for a beer and fish fry, the ever-watchful Batavian reported the 911: “A caller to dispatch reports 20 people ("two-zero") are jumping in the falls by the Indian Falls Log Cabin Restaurant. The dispatcher relayed this complaint to a Sheriff's deputy who asked: "I thought were weren't responding to those (calls) anymore?"

 

The Log Cabin Restaurant and Bar is a log cabin restaurant and bar in the Genesee County hamlet of Indian Falls. You’ll miss it if you are speeding northward from the Pembroke Thruway exit to the micropolis of Medina (part of the Albion-Medina Microplex). Turn left at the dip in the road. It is on the eastern fringe of Buffaloland. The food is typical bar food, but you are going for the folksy ambience, the wood-smoke curling up from the stone fireplace (in winter), and the view, which in summer includes local youth diving into the base of the falls. The spirit of Seneca sachem Ely Parker, who was born on the spot, pervades the place.