The Most Beautiful Waterfalls in North America

23 places in 4 countries · updated 13 October 2026

1. 01 Niagara Falls

   Canada · 3.2 km from Niagara Falls43.080° N 79.071° W

   

   That retreat used to happen fast — over a metre a year at points in the falls' history — which was actually a problem, since erosion that quick threatened to undercut the very cliffs tourism and hydropower depended on. The fix has been to throttle the river itself: since early hydroelectric development began diverting large volumes of the Niagara River's flow into power-station intakes (more at night and outside peak tourist season, less during the day in summer to keep the view impressive), engineers have deliberately cut the water actually going over the brink.

   Did you know? Before Annie Edson Taylor rode over Horseshoe Falls in 1901, her cat was sent over in the same barrel as a test, and it came out unharmed.

   More about Niagara Falls →

2. 02 Yosemite Falls

   United States37.755° N 119.597° W

   

   The water comes from Yosemite Creek, which gathers snowmelt on the plateau above and then runs out of ground at the rim. Its valley was left hanging when glaciers cut the main valley far deeper than the side streams could follow, so the creek simply falls off the edge. That also explains its moods. In late spring, when the high country is melting, the fall roars and the spray drifts across the path at its foot; by late summer or autumn it usually dwindles and in dry years stops altogether, leaving a dark streak on the rock.

   Did you know? In winter an ice cone builds up at the foot of the Upper Fall from frozen spray and can grow to roughly 300 feet, about 25 storeys.

   More about Yosemite Falls →

3. 03 Agua Azul Waterfalls

   Cascadas de Agua Azul

   Mexico17.256° N 92.116° W

   

   The name, "blue water", describes the river's best colour. The Xanil carries a heavy load of dissolved calcium carbonate, and where it slows and spreads the mineral is laid down again as travertine, coating rocks, roots and fallen branches in pale, rounded crusts. Over time these deposits have built the natural dams and lips that hold each pool, and the pale limestone floor under clear water gives the river its milky turquoise. The colour depends on the season: in the dry months, roughly November to May, the pools are at their bluest, while in the summer rains the river swells, overruns its terraces and can turn brown with sediment.

   Did you know? Fallen trees in the river slowly turn into stone-like logs as calcium carbonate encases them, and trunks at different stages of calcification line the banks.

   More about Agua Azul Waterfalls →

4. 04 Montmorency Falls

   Canada · 9.4 km from Quebec City46.891° N 71.147° W

   

   The falls were named by Samuel de Champlain in honour of Charles de Montmorency-Damville, admiral of France, and they entered history during the Seven Years' War. In the summer of 1759, while besieging Quebec, the British general James Wolfe tried to break the French lines on the Beauport shore beside the falls and was driven back by Montcalm's troops; only later, by landing at the Anse au Foulon, did he reach the Plains of Abraham. The cliffs where that first assault failed are the same ones visitors now walk along.

   Did you know? Quebec's first hydroelectric power station opened at the foot of a smaller fall here on 7 October 1885, lighting the city's main streets and later powering its tramways.

   More about Montmorency Falls →

5. 05 Multnomah Falls

   United States45.576° N 122.115° W

   

   The Multnomah and Wasco stories tied to the falls describe a plague threatening the tribe and a chief's daughter who climbed to the top of the cliff and threw herself onto the rocks below as a sacrifice to end it — in some retellings, to save a lover who had fallen sick. Other versions soften the story into a princess seeking a private place to bathe, with the falls created to please her. Either way, it's local legend rather than settled history, and worth treating as exactly that.

   Did you know? The falls run all year because the creek is fed mainly by underground springs on Larch Mountain, topped up by rain and snowmelt.

   More about Multnomah Falls →

6. 06 McWay Falls

   United States36.159° N 121.672° W

   

   The cove owes its present look to an accident. In the very wet winter of 1983, when Big Sur recorded close to 89 inches of rain, landslides dumped some three million cubic yards of material onto the coast nearby. Currents carried the debris into the cove, and the beach under the fall built up from it. Before then the water dropped more directly into the surf. Seen from the cliff path, the untouched sand and the white thread of water look almost too composed to be natural.

   Did you know? The Pelton wheel on McWay Creek was built from hand-split redwood by ranch foreman Hans Ewoldsen and supplied the first electric power in Big Sur.

   More about McWay Falls →

7. 07 Shoshone Falls

   United States · 6.2 km from Twin Falls42.595° N 114.401° W

   

   The falls are young and were made violently. Around 14,500–17,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, Lake Bonneville in the Great Basin overflowed through Red Rock Pass and released an immense flood down the Snake, carving the canyon in a matter of weeks. Where the water met a hard band of roughly six-million-year-old volcanic rock, the cliff survived as a step. The drop has always been the upper limit for salmon and steelhead: fish gathered at its base in vast numbers, and the Lemhi Shoshone, after whom the falls are named, came here to fish and trade.

   Did you know? Bishop Blanchet, a native of Quebec, first named the cataract "Canadian Falls"; the name lasted only two years before "Shoshone Falls" replaced it.

   More about Shoshone Falls →

8. 08 Dry Falls, Washington

   Dry Falls

   United States47.606° N 119.354° W

   

   The cliff was carved by the Missoula floods at the end of the last ice age. A lobe of the continental ice sheet dammed the Clark Fork River in present-day Montana, creating glacial Lake Missoula; each time the ice dam failed, the lake emptied across eastern Washington in a matter of days, and as it refilled the cycle repeated, probably forty or more times. At the height of a flood the waterfall at this point is estimated to have been about five times the width of Niagara Falls, carrying ten times the combined flow of all the rivers in the world today. The torrents stripped the soil from the plateau and cut the maze of dry channels known as the Channeled Scablands.

   Did you know? Each outburst of glacial Lake Missoula may have released energy equal to about 4,500 megatons of TNT, some 90 times the largest nuclear bomb ever tested.

   More about Dry Falls, Washington →

9. 09 Eternal Flame Falls

   United States · 22.7 km from Buffalo42.702° N 78.752° W

   

   The flame has attracted scientists as well as walkers. In 2013 geologists from Indiana University Bloomington and Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology studied the seep to understand how natural hydrocarbon seeps contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. They found that the gas here is unusually rich in ethane and propane, about 35 per cent, whereas most natural seeps are dominated by methane, and estimated that the main seep releases roughly a kilogram of methane a day. Numerous smaller seeps were found around the falls.

   Did you know? With around 35 per cent ethane and propane, the flame's gas may be the richest in these heavier hydrocarbons of any natural seep ever reported.

   More about Eternal Flame Falls →

10. 10 Takakkaw Falls

    Canada51.500° N 116.473° W

    

    The water comes from the Daly Glacier, an outlet of the Waputik Icefield on the Continental Divide. Because they are fed by meltwater, the falls keep their volume through the warm summer months, and they are at their fullest in late spring, once the heavy winter snow begins to melt. The name comes from the Cree language and means roughly "it is magnificent". It was not given by the Indigenous people of this valley, though; the Cree did not live here. The name was proposed by William Cornelius Van Horne, head of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and officially adopted in 1904.

    Did you know? The waterfall is narrow: on average only about 23 metres across, widening to around 46 metres at peak flow.

    More about Takakkaw Falls →

11. 11 Hierve el Agua

    Mexico · 14.4 km from Mitla16.866° N 96.276° W

    

    The larger formation, the cascada grande, hangs about thirty metres down from a lip some ninety metres wide, high above the valley floor; the smaller cascada chica drops around twelve metres from a base about sixty metres across. On the terrace above them, known as the Amphitheatre, four springs bubble up at a mild 22 to 27 °C. Their fizzing gave the place its Spanish name, "the water boils", although the water is barely warm. It gathers in natural rimmed basins and in two larger pools cut for bathing, and the dissolved minerals tint it a milky turquoise that stands out sharply against the ochre scrub.

    Did you know? Only two of the four springs on the upper terrace actually bubble; the effect is thought to come from underground currents, not from heat.

    More about Hierve el Agua →

12. 12 Havasu Falls

    United States36.255° N 112.698° W

    

    The fall has not always looked like this. Before a flood in 1910 the water came over the cliff as a nearly continuous sheet, and the place was then known as Bridal Veil Falls. That flood cut the notch through which most of the water now drops, and later floods have reshaped the notch, the pools and the travertine several times since. It is a young landscape in constant revision: the shape you see is only the latest version.

    Did you know? Havasu Creek is spring-fed, and its water stays in the low 70s °F in summer and the mid-50s °F in winter.

    More about Havasu Falls →

13. 13 Carbet Falls

    Chutes du Carbet

    Guadeloupe · 25.1 km from Pointe-à-Pitre16.046° N 61.652° W

    

    The first and highest fall plunges about 115 metres, high on the mountainside around 900 metres above sea level; the river's source lies only two kilometres further upstream at about 1,300 metres. The second fall, some 110 metres high, is the most frequently seen, reached by a paved path through the forest from the road below. The third and lowest is only about 20 metres tall but carries the greatest volume of water of any waterfall on the island. Several hot springs rise in the forest nearby.

    Did you know? The river's name recalls an Amerindian village of carbets, large open-sided communal shelters, that once stood near its mouth.

    More about Carbet Falls →

14. 14 Basaseachic Falls

    Cascada de Basaseachi

    Mexico28.174° N 108.213° W

    

    Below the falls the stream takes the name Río Candameña, after the canyon it has cut — one of the deepest in the Sierra Tarahumara, with walls that rise as much as 1,640 metres. The landscape was shaped by tectonic fracturing that opened rifts and raised blocks, and then by long erosion of wind and water. The name is generally traced to the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) language, in which it is linked to coyotes; the Rarámuri lived in these mountains before the Spanish colonial period, and Europeans first reached the falls in the 18th century.

    Did you know? Spanish-language sources note that "Piedra Volada" is likely a misreading of "Piedra Bolada", a name referring to a nearby spherical rock formation rather than a flying stone.

    More about Basaseachic Falls →

15. 15 Cumberland Falls

    United States · 39.8 km from London36.838° N 84.344° W

    

    By day the falls is a broad curtain of water on the Cumberland River, about 68 feet (21 m) high and 125 feet (38 m) wide, pouring over a ledge of resistant sandstone into a wide plunge pool. Its nicknames, the Little Niagara or the Niagara of the South, reflect its rank: it is the largest waterfall by volume in the eastern United States south of Niagara. It has not always stood here. Geologists believe the falls began about 45 miles downstream at the Pottsville Escarpment near Burnside and has been eating its way upstream ever since, carving a gorge up to 400 feet deep and losing height as it retreats; in time it will wear itself away altogether.

    Did you know? When the falls stood far downstream it carried more water, because the Laurel and Rockcastle rivers join the Cumberland between that site and today's.

    More about Cumberland Falls →

16. 16 Horsetail Fall

    United States37.729° N 119.628° W

    

    For about two weeks in mid-to-late February, that changes completely. As the sun sets low enough in the southwest, its light hits the granite wall behind the falling water at an angle that makes the whole plume glow orange-to-red, as if lava were pouring down the cliff — a genuine optical effect, not a filter or an editing trick, first captured on film by photographer Galen Rowell in 1973. It only works if three things line up at once: enough snowpack earlier in the winter to keep water flowing, a completely clear western sky right at sunset, and the sun sitting at the narrow band of angles that only occurs around February 19–23 each year.

    Did you know? Among Yosemite's waterfalls that run at some point every year, only Ribbon Fall has a longer free-falling drop than Horsetail Fall.

    More about Horsetail Fall →

17. 17 Helmcken Falls

    Canada51.954° N 120.177° W

    

    The landscape is volcanic. Starting some 200,000 years ago, lava welled up from fissures in the Wells Gray–Clearwater volcanic field and filled the broad valley of the Clearwater River, flow upon flow, until it formed the Murtle Plateau. At the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, enormous floods cut down through these layers and carved Helmcken Canyon below the falls. Upstream, the Murtle drops over six more waterfalls, among them Dawson Falls and The Mushbowl.

    Did you know? The dams were stopped after volunteers ran bus tours in 1972, asking passengers to picture the valley under water; the plan was shelved within a year.

    More about Helmcken Falls →

18. 18 Palouse Falls

    United States46.664° N 118.224° W

    

    Standing at the rim, you can read that history in the walls: the canyon exposes the basalt flow upon flow, stripped bare by the floods, with the plunge pool lying at the bottom of the bowl far below. A short distance upstream the river makes a smaller drop of around 6 m over another ledge before gathering for the main fall, and some 6 km further down, the Palouse joins the Snake River.

    Did you know? The canyon at the falls is about 115 metres deep, cutting through a thick stack of Columbia River basalt lava flows.

    More about Palouse Falls →

19. 19 Burney Falls

    United States41.011° N 121.653° W

    

    The secret lies underground. The surrounding landscape, where the Cascade Range meets the Modoc Plateau, is built of layered basalt laid down by volcanic activity more than a million years ago. This rock soaks up rain and snowmelt like a sponge, forming a large reservoir that leaks out as springs at and above the falls. Geologists cite Burney Falls as a textbook example of a stream fed by springs controlled by rock layers, and of a waterfall formed as softer horizontal strata are undercut beneath harder ones. The water is cold, rarely rising above about 42°F, and below the falls Burney Creek runs on to Lake Britton, a reservoir on the Pit River.

    Did you know? In the 1988 fantasy film Willow only half of Burney Falls appears on screen; the other half was removed digitally.

    More about Burney Falls →

20. 20 Akaka Falls State Park

    United States · 18.1 km from Hilo19.854° N 155.154° W

    

    The falls carry a chiefly name: ʻAkaka is traditionally connected with a chief called ʻAkaka-o-ka-nīʻau-oiʻo-i-ka-wao, grandson of Kūlanikapele and Kīakalohia. The surroundings hold places from Hawaiian lore as well. A stone named Pōhaku a Pele is said in local tradition to darken the sky and bring rain when it is struck with a branch of lehua ʻāpane, the ʻōhiʻa tree with deep red blossoms. Another large boulder, about 70 feet upstream of the lip, is known as Pōhaku o Kāloa.

    Did you know? The goby is mostly a grazer, with plant matter making up over 90 percent of its diet, and may refuel on algae coating the rock as it climbs.

    More about Akaka Falls State Park →

21. 21 Virginia Falls

    Canada61.607° N 125.737° W

    

    The falls are slowly moving upstream. They once stood at the lower end of what is now Fourth Canyon, and over the centuries they have cut their way back through the limestone, leaving that canyon, also called Painted or Five Mile Canyon, behind them. The South Nahanni is an antecedent river, a river older than the mountains it crosses. It held its winding course while the ranges slowly rose around it, so its canyons meander too, with walls that reach about 1,000 metres. Constant spray and sheltering cliffs give the falls a mild microclimate in which boreal orchids grow, among them calypso and several lady's-slippers.

    Did you know? The "Headless Valley" legend began around 1908, when the headless remains of two Métis prospectors, the brothers Willie and Frank McLeod, were found downriver.

    More about Virginia Falls →

22. 22 Cascada de Tamul

    Mexico · 25.7 km from Ciudad Valles21.801° N 99.179° W

    

    The usual way to see Tamul is from below, which adds to its drama. The approach is by boat up the Tampaón from the riverbank landing at La Morena, a trip of over an hour between the canyon walls, until the falls appears across the head of the gorge. Nearby is also a flooded cave of clear water more than 45 metres deep. In the 1960s people living nearby called the falls "La Sonadora", the noisy one, for the roar it makes in the rainy season when the Gallinas is in flood.

    Did you know? In the rainy season the falling water can spread into a curtain as much as 300 metres wide.

    More about Cascada de Tamul →

23. 23 Toketee Falls

    United States43.263° N 122.431° W

    

    The name is Chinook Jargon, the old trade language of the Pacific Northwest, and means "pretty" or "graceful". It was made official by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1916, chosen over the rival names Ireland Falls and Toketie Falls. Because the North Umpqua is a sizeable river rather than a seasonal creek, the falls keeps running all year, unlike many Oregon waterfalls that fade in summer.

    Did you know? The river's famous emerald colour and steady cool flow come from snowmelt soaked up by volcanic soil and pumice and released through the summer.

    More about Toketee Falls →