Toketee Falls in basalt columns
— — water falling through a pipe organ of stone.
Not only on a wall.
“A two-tier waterfall on the North Umpqua, dropping first about twenty-eight feet and then another eighty-five into a green plunge pool. The cliff behind it is a wall of hexagonal basalt columns left by a lava flow that cooled, cracked, and held its shape. The trail in from the parking lot is short, a little over a third of a mile, with a wooden overlook at the end. The name is from Chinook Jargon and means graceful. The river keeps moving.
Toketee Falls in basalt columns, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
Toketee Falls sits on the North Umpqua River in the Umpqua National Forest, about sixty miles east of Roseburg along Oregon Highway 138. The falls drop in two tiers totaling roughly 113 feet, the lower tier the taller of the two at about 85 feet. The name comes from Chinook Jargon and is usually translated as graceful or pretty. A short footpath of about four-tenths of a mile, with stairs and a wooden overlook at the end, reaches the viewing platform from a small trailhead just off the highway near the Toketee Ranger Station.
The cliff the water falls past is a wall of columnar basalt, hexagonal pillars left when a thick lava flow cooled slowly and contracted into long, regular cracks. The flow is part of the volcanic field that built the southern Oregon Cascades over the last several million years. The columns are exposed cleanly along both tiers, so the falls read like an organ pipe wrapped in green moss. The pool at the base is deep and cold, a holding tank of glacial-fed water before the North Umpqua runs on west toward Steamboat and the main river.
The trailhead is on Toketee-Rigdon Road, about a mile north of Highway 138 near milepost 59. The walk is short, roughly four-tenths of a mile each way, with steps and a wooden overlook at the end. There is no fee. The platform is the only legal viewpoint; the cliff edges off-trail are unfenced and dangerous, and rescues have followed people who climbed down for a closer look. The falls run year round, fullest in late spring as the snowpack drains off the Cascades above Diamond Lake.