About us
About The Waterfall Guide
The Waterfall Guide is a directory of US waterfalls for people planning a visit. It answers the practical questions. Do you need a permit or a timed ticket? What does it cost, and where do you park? How long and hard is the trail? Are dogs and swimming allowed? When is the best season, and is the waterfall open right now?
The site launched in October 2026. It has 168 waterfall pages in 30 states, 30 full state guides and 6 planning guides. You can browse by state or find waterfalls on the map.
What you'll find on each waterfall page
Each waterfall page covers the same planning facts, so you can compare places quickly:
- Permits and timed tickets
- Fees and parking
- Trail length and difficulty
- Dog rules and swimming rules
- Best season to visit
- Current status: Open, Seasonal, Partly open, Closed or Unconfirmed
- A "last verified" date, shown on the page and in the "Checked" stamp
- A Sources list with links to the agencies behind the facts
Some pages also show a monthly river flow chart from USGS gauge records. It shows the seasonal pattern, not live flow. Right now 32 pages have one.
How we check facts
Facts come from the agency that manages each waterfall, with sources listed. That might be the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the BLM, a state park or DNR, a county, a city, a tribe or a private operator. Heights may come from Wikipedia or the World Waterfall Database. Facts are also cited inline.
The "last verified" date is the date we last checked that page's facts against its sources. There is no fixed re-check schedule. We re-check a page when we learn of a change, such as an agency alert, a reader report, or a seasonal opening or closure. Each page shows how old its check is.
We use AI tools to help research agency pages and draft text. Every fact must trace to a cited source. If it can't, it is removed or labeled unconfirmed. Before publishing, each page goes through a separate review pass that checks claims against the sources.
The full rules are in our editorial policy.
What we don't do
- We don't publish star ratings or reviews.
- We don't claim first-hand visits. Pages describe what agencies and public records say, not personal trip reports.
- We don't guess. If we can't confirm the current status or a key fact from an official source, the page says "Unconfirmed".
- We don't take payment for listings. No agency or operator pays to be listed.
- We don't encourage leaving trails, crossing barriers, climbing on falls, or swimming or jumping where it's not allowed. See waterfall safety.
Photos
The site has no photos of its own. We only use photos with a free Creative Commons license or in the public domain. Most come from Wikimedia Commons, plus public-domain photos from the National Park Service. Every image credits the photographer and license, and the full list is on the photo credits page.
We check each photo by eye to make sure it shows the right waterfall. We never use AI-generated images to show a real place.
Contact and corrections
If something on a page is wrong or out of date, please tell us. Email hello@thewaterfallguides.com or use the contact page. Include the waterfall, what changed, and an official link if you have one.
We check your report against the official source. If it's confirmed, we fix the page and move its "last verified" date.
Who edits the site
Pages are written and checked by The Waterfall Guide editorial team, under a house byline. We use AI tools to help research and draft, and every fact is checked against the agency page it cites. See how we use AI.