Palouse Falls
Interesting facts
- The Palouse once flowed through the now-dry Washtucna Coulee to the Columbia, until Ice Age floods breached its valley wall and diverted it to the Snake.
- The canyon at the falls is about 115 metres deep, cutting through a thick stack of Columbia River basalt lava flows.
- In 1984 a county utility proposed a 30-metre hydroelectric dam just upstream of the falls, but ratepayers voted against funding it.
- Bradt's 2009 kayak record sparked new measurements: his team put the main drop at 186 ft, a Whitman College survey at 175 to 180 ft.
- The official height of the falls had last been measured in 1945, and the drop varies by a few feet as river levels rise and fall.
- In January 2009 the river peaked at about 8,300 cubic feet per second, raising the pool above the falls roughly 12 feet higher than in late summer.
- The Palus people and later the Mullan Road, an 1860s military wagon route, both used the easy passage onto the plateau near the falls.
- The canyon around the falls is a showcase of the channeled scablands, with flood-carved coulees, kolk-scoured potholes, buttes and rock pinnacles.
Why it is worth it
Palouse Falls appears with no warning. The open farmland of south-eastern Washington gives little hint of what lies ahead until the ground opens into a basalt canyon, and the Palouse River drops about 60 m (200 ft) in a single plunge into a round bowl walled with rock. The pool and the amphitheatre around it are the work of water on a scale hard to picture: in the Pleistocene the Missoula Floods swept again and again across eastern Washington and carved this canyon out of the lava flows of the Columbia River Basalt Group.
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.
Palouse Falls was named Washington's official state waterfall in 2014, after elementary-school pupils from nearby Washtucna proposed the bill and the state House of Representatives passed it unanimously. The falls have one more claim to fame: on 21 April 2009 the kayaker Tyler Bradt paddled over the main drop, setting an unofficial world record for the highest waterfall descended in a kayak. The surrounding Palouse Falls State Park, established in 1951, is small, around 38 hectares, and day-use only.
Getting there
The park lies north of the Snake River, about 67 km from Walla Walla. From Washtucna, State Route 261 runs south-west and then south-east to the turn-off onto Palouse Falls Road, which leads for about 4 km, partly on gravel and dirt, to the parking area. A fenced overlook gives the classic view down into the canyon, and a short gravelled path continues along the rim. The nearest airport is Walla Walla Regional Airport (ALW), about 63 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Palouse Falls is a waterfall in the northwest United States on the Palouse River, about four miles (6 km) upstream of its confluence with the Snake River in southeast Washington. Within the 94-acre (38 ha) Palouse Falls State Park, the falls are 200 feet (61 m) in height, and consist of an upper fall with a drop around twenty feet (6 m), which lies 1,000 feet (300 m) north-northwest of the main drop, and a lower fall.
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