Dry Falls Overlook
34875 Park Lake Rd NE
Coulee City, WA
Stand on the rim of a waterfall three miles wide and four hundred feet high, dry now, that once carried more water than every river on Earth combined.
Dry Falls looks impossible at first: a horseshoe cliff more than three miles wide and some four hundred feet tall, clearly a waterfall, but with no water going over it and no river above. From the overlook you are standing at the lip of what geologists believe was the largest waterfall the world has ever known, many times the size of Niagara, now utterly silent.
The water that carved it came in catastrophic bursts at the end of the last Ice Age, and understanding how it formed is one of the great detective stories in geology. Below the dry cliff, a scatter of small lakes now fills the pools the falls once hammered out.
What Guests Love
- The sheer scale of the cliff and the dry plunge basin, hard to grasp until you are standing on the rim
- Learning that this silent cliff was once the greatest waterfall known to have existed
- The string of blue lakes glinting in the old plunge pools far below
- The interpretive center that explains the Ice Age floods that made it all
Worth Knowing
- The overlook is right on a cliff edge with big drops; keep children and dogs close to the railings
- This is high desert, hot and shadeless in summer and cold and windy in winter, so dress for the season
- A Washington Discover Pass is required to park
- The interpretive center keeps seasonal hours, but the viewpoint itself is there whenever the park is open
Details
Coulee City, WA
Learn about Dry Falls Overlook
The greatest waterfall that ever was
Around fifteen thousand years ago, an ice dam in what is now Montana held back an enormous glacial lake, Lake Missoula. Again and again the dam failed, releasing walls of water that raced across eastern Washington at highway speed toward the sea.
When those floods poured over this basalt cliff, they formed a waterfall on a scale almost beyond imagining, estimated at several miles wide with flows dwarfing anything alive today. As the falls pounded the rock, they slowly ate their way upstream, retreating to where the cliff now stands. When the floods ended, the water simply stopped, leaving the dry cliff behind.
Reading the scablands
For a long time nobody could explain the strange, scoured landscape of eastern Washington, its dry channels, giant potholes, and stranded boulders. A geologist named J Harlen Bretz argued in the 1920s that only immense floods could have done it, an idea that was fiercely rejected for decades before the evidence finally proved him right.
Today the channeled scablands are recognized worldwide as one of the best places on the planet to read the marks of catastrophic flooding, and Dry Falls has been honored as a scientifically significant geologic site. Standing at the overlook, you are looking at the front line of that ancient deluge.
The lakes below
The little lakes strung out beneath the cliff are the falls' own plunge pools, the deep basins the falling water dug out, now fed by groundwater and rimmed with reeds. In a desert setting they are green oases, drawing wildlife and, in the state park below, anglers and campers.
The contrast is the whole story of the place: a bone-dry monument to a flood, with quiet blue water pooled at its foot.
Wildlife and seasons
The surrounding shrub-steppe is home to marmots, coyotes, mule deer, rattlesnakes, and a lot of birds, from cliff-nesting swallows and swifts to raptors riding the desert thermals. The lakes below attract waterfowl and migrants.
Spring is the sweet spot, when the desert briefly greens and wildflowers appear and the heat has not yet arrived. Summer is hot and bright, fall is mild and golden, and winter is cold and often windy, when the empty cliff looks starkest of all.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Coulee City
Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park
Just below the overlook
The recreation area in the plunge-pool basin, with swimming, boating, camping, and easy trails among the lakes beneath the dry cliff.
Lake Lenore Caves
About 8 miles south
Shallow flood-carved rock shelters in the coulee wall, once used by Native people, reached by a short climb from the road.
Grand Coulee Dam
About 25 miles north
One of the largest concrete dams in the country, on the Columbia River, with an overlook and a summer laser light show on the face.