It is the last week of summer for many families as school is back in session on Tuesday. Here’s a photo of NOTL youth hanging out on the docks as the steamship, the Cayuga, pulls away. To the delight of passengers, these kids would dive off the dock to retrieve the coins they tossed from the ship’s deck into the river. In the background, we see one of the sandsuckers coming up the river. These ships removed sand from the sandbar at the mouth of the Niagara River. The sandbar was a source of clean sand, which was ideal for producing concrete. A large amount of concrete was needed for the construction of two projects in Niagara in the early 1900s — the fourth Welland Canal and the massive Sir Adam Beck hydro-electric project in Queenston. Dredging operations began in 1916 and continued until the 1990s.