Fall Creek Falls – Oconee County, South Carolina

Fall Creek winds through Oconee County and empties into the Chattooga River. A popular place for hikers, it has three waterfalls over a mile-long stretch, which range from 30 to 50 feet high. The upper waterfall (shown here) and is 35 feet tall.

A hiking trail along the creek starts at Forest Service Road 722, which is off the Chattooga Ridge Road. For those who only have time for a quick hike, the waterfall pictured here is the first one along the trail and is easy to reach.

For more adventurous explorers, the trail continues two miles downstream where you can see the other falls. It becomes more difficult the further you hike since it is not well marked and the thickets are overgrown.

Todd Ward from nearby Tamassee captured this photo in April 2009, and his picture has an interesting story behind it:

“This picture was taken during my second trip to this particular waterfall. The first time I saw Fall Creek Falls was while I was on leave in November of 2007, before being deployed to Afghanistan. I spent most of my leave time hiking several miles of South Carolina trails hunting for waterfalls. This one, however, stuck out because as I was walking back to my car I wound up slipping on something underneath the newly fallen leaves. I looked down and happened to stir up a skeleton of some sort. I started snapping pictures to research what the original form was and perhaps find out how it came to be in the current condition. But, as I downloaded the pictures to the computer, it went down and I lost the pictures of all the waterfalls I had seen, and the bones as well. I was extremely frustrated knowing that it would be over a year that I would be able to get back to try and solve the mystery. When I finally did make it back I got several more pictures of Fall Creek Falls once again, but the skeleton was nowhere to be found.”

Get directions to the Fall Creek trail.