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Lower Falls of the Yellowstone
The 308-foot falls at the head of Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon
A painting of this waterfall helped persuade Congress to protect Yellowstone. Thomas Moran sketched the Lower Falls during the 1871 Hayden survey, and in 1872 Congress paid him $10,000 for his huge canvas of the canyon. The falls drop 308 feet (94 m), nearly twice the height of Niagara, where the Yellowstone River pours off a resistant lip of rhyolite into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Flow swings from about 680 cubic feet per second (19 m³/s) in autumn to as much as 8,400 cubic feet per second (240 m³/s) during the late spring melt.
The Lower Falls sit a short distance downstream of the 109-foot (33 m) Upper Falls, but a bend in the canyon keeps the two from being seen together. Below them the canyon runs roughly 20 miles (32 km), 800 to 1,200 feet (240 to 370 m) deep, cut into rock that hot water altered and stained in yellow, orange and pink. The National Park Service says the present canyon is no more than 10,000 to 14,000 years old. Visitors take in the falls from Artist Point, Lookout Point and Red Rock Point, or stand at the brink itself at the end of a steep paved trail.