Multnomah Falls

Interesting facts

On Labor Day 1995 a boulder of about 400 tons fell some 225 feet from the cliff, slightly injuring about 20 wedding guests on Benson Bridge.

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

The falls formed roughly 15,000 years ago, when the Ice Age Missoula Floods scoured the gorge and left Multnomah Creek in a hanging valley.

Timber baron Simon Benson, who owned the falls, paid for Italian stonemasons to build the footbridge that now bears his name.

Benson Bridge spans the creek about 32 metres above the lower cascade, which itself drops around 21 metres.

The stone Multnomah Falls Lodge, designed by Portland architect A. E. Doyle, was completed in 1925 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

With more than two million visitors a year, it is often cited as the most visited natural recreation site in the Pacific Northwest.

Lewis and Clark noted the waterfall during their expedition down the Columbia in 1805.

The origin of the name is uncertain; one account credits a Portland steamboat operator who coined it to promote river excursions.

Why it is worth it

Multnomah drops in two stages off a basalt cliff in the Columbia River Gorge, a total fall of about 189 metres — 165 of them in the upper tier — split by the Benson Bridge — a footbridge built in 1914 that crosses the gorge between the upper and lower tiers, close enough to the lower plunge that its spray reaches the rail. It's one of the few major waterfalls anywhere where the standard viewpoint puts you inside the fall's own microclimate rather than looking at it from a respectful distance.

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.

The site's more recent history is less mythic and more sobering: the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire burned through the forest surrounding the falls, closing the area for well over a year.

Good to know

In hard cold snaps the lower falls can partially freeze into dramatic ice formations, though this is rare and unpredictable. Parking at the main lot fills fast, and the site can require timed-use permits during peak summer weekends.

Best time to visit

Late winter through spring brings the fullest flow from rain and snowmelt; by late summer the creek's flow — it's a fairly small watershed, not glacier-fed — drops noticeably.

Getting there

19 km from Washougal. Portland International Airport (PDX) is about 38 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

Multnomah Falls is a waterfall located on Multnomah Creek in the Columbia River Gorge, east of Troutdale, between Corbett and Dodson, Oregon, United States. The waterfall is accessible from the Historic Columbia River Highway and Interstate 84. Spanning two tiers on basalt cliffs, it is the tallest waterfall in the state of Oregon at 620 ft (189 m) in height. The Multnomah Creek Bridge, built in 1914, crosses below the falls, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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