McWay Falls

McWay Falls is small by the standards of this collection — a single ribbon of about 80 feet — but its setting is hard to match anywhere on the Pacific coast. McWay Creek leaps from a coastal cliff straight onto a small sandy cove in Big Sur, and at high tide the water falls directly into the ocean. Waterfalls that end in the sea are rare; one that does so into a crescent of pale sand ringed by turquoise water and rock is rarer still.

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.

The land above the fall has its own story. In 1924 Congressman Lathrop Brown and his wife Hélène bought the Saddle Rock Ranch, a property of about 1,600 acres, from the homesteader Christopher McWay. They later built a modern two-storey Waterfall House on the headland, and a Pelton wheel installed on the creek in 1932 generated electricity for the property. In 1961 Hélène Brown gave the land to the state on condition that it be named after Julia Pfeiffer Burns, a woman of the early Big Sur coast; the park still carries that name.

Getting there

The falls are in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park on California State Route 1, about 37 miles south of Carmel-by-the-Sea. A half-mile trail leads from the park to the overlook above the cove. The nearest airport is Monterey Regional Airport (MRY), about 50 km away in a straight line, with the drive down the coast highway taking considerably longer. The nearest town listed by distance, Soledad, is on the far side of the Santa Lucia Range; Carmel and Monterey to the north are the practical bases.