Arethusa Falls

The Arethusa Falls trailhead is well signed along Route 302 in Crawford Notch State Park, located about halfway between Bartlett and Gates of the Notch. The trail climbs steadily for 1.5 miles and gains about 800 feet in elevation to reach the base of the falls.Arethusa Falls is one of the most well known waterfalls in the White Mountains and over time it has generated a reputation that in some ways exceeds the actual stature of the waterfall itself. The falls occur along Bemis Brook where it slides and then drops over a broad reddish-orange granite cliff, veiling 176 feet in a broad wall of water which zigzags down the cliff face and eventually glides over smooth slabs that base of the falls. When viewed from below, the falls don't quite appear to the untrained eye to be as tall as reported. Our initial estimates placed it at closer to 140 feet, however upon surveying the falls in October 2015 we found the suggested height of 176 feet to be close enough to our figures to be believable - though it will likely require another survey at some point just to be sure.
With the falls standing 176 feet tall, Arethusa Falls is often claimed to be the tallest waterfall in New Hampshire. This claim likely dates back well over 100 years since the initial measurement was taken in the late 1800s, during a time when natural features were a huge tourism draw and were endlessly romanticized by writers, poets, painters, and (later on) early photographers. We now know Arethusa Falls to not even be in the top 10 tallest waterfall in New Hampshire, but it is possible that it may be the tallest single-drop waterfall (though not free-falling) in the state. Further surveying will need to be conducted in other locations to test the validity of this claim.
The drainage basin of Bemis Brook upstream of Arethusa Falls is fairly small, covering just 0.9 square mile in area. There are several small areas of marsh which will help regulate the flow of the brook in the dry season, and the entire basin is at a fairly high elevation (for the White Mountains), so the winter snow pack will be retained well into the spring months, but by late summer and early autumn the volume of the stream does drop considerably without sustained periods of precipitation to replenish it. But despite the small size of the basin, the stream does seem to remain fairly consistent throughout the summer and autumn months, though it isn't unheard of for the falls to be reduced to effectively a trickle by September - especially in years where Hurricane activity in the Atlantic is reduced or directed more towards the Gulf of Mexico, which would prevent the remnant moisture from trailing north into New England after the storms fizzle out.Arethusa Falls were at one time known as Tuckerman Falls, but the name never gained any traction. The name Arethusa Falls became the proper title for the cataract in 1875 thanks to the efforts of Moses Sweetser and J.H. Huntington.