It’s a leather-bound relic stuck on the top shelf of a basement room at Oak Hall.

It’s tucked behind a sheet of plastic, barely noticeable among the binders, filing cabinets and film canisters.

But it just might be the most impressive autograph collection in Niagara Falls.

The first signature in the Niagara Parks Commission’s official guest book is illegible. It was someone from England who visited on Aug. 8, 1920. The next dozen or so pages are the same thing — quickly-scrawled names of people who passed through the Commission’s 62.2-hectare park named for Queen Victoria, which opened in May 1888.

It was an unremarkable tome, notable only to mark the distances people travelled to see Niagara Falls.

Then in 1923, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George became the first famous visitor to sign the book. It wasn’t flashy — no witty message attached — but it was history.

Since then, the rich and famous alike have been jotting their names in the same book, compiling a roll call any autograph collector would covet.

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