Buttermilk Falls

Buttermilk Falls State Park is located at the very south end of the city of Ithaca, just east of Route 34 – signs for the park are abundant along the highway. The falls are visible from the road leading to the parking area, and the large pool at its base which doubles as a swimming area in the summer is just a few dozen yards from the parking area - functionally accessible by all.Buttermilk Creek, like so many others in the Finger Lakes area, courses down a narrow gorge as it descends into the glacially carved valley occupied by Cayuga Lake at the south end of the city of Ithaca. What makes the various falls of Buttermilk Creek unique is the structure of the gorge. The creek descends about 430 feet in just over two-thirds of a mile, dropping over at least eight distinct waterfalls. Initially the falls start as small plunges and cascades, but as the stream descends the falls get progressively taller, wider, and less steep. The lowermost falls on Buttermilk Creek is the namesake of Buttermilk Falls State Park, as well as the tallest falls on the creek. The falls are composed of two distinct tiers, both cascading type falls which sheet across broad shelves of bedrock slides. The upper tier drops 26 feet, with an average width of about 45 feet, and the lower drops 80 feet, with a run of about 190 feet, and spreading out from a width of about 60 feet at its brink to as much as 100 feet across at its base. At the bottom of the falls is a large pool which is artificially deepened by about 5 feet in the summer by a small removable dam to accommodate swimming. The top of Buttermilk Falls is separated from the base of the next fall upstream – Upper Buttermilk Falls – by only about 150 linear feet. Under the guidelines used for this database, because the distance between the two falls is not great, and because the two falls can be seen in tandem from certain angles, we would consider them to be collectively all part of the same waterfall. However the historical precedent of the upper fall being distinctly named and recognized as its own individual waterfall takes priority in this aspect of its classification, so the two sections of fall are considered separate entities. The drainage basin for Buttermilk Creek covers an area of about 11-1/2 square miles in area, and while it does hold a couple of small ponds and bogs, there are no large sources of standing water feeding the creek. This results in the stream varying in volume considerably as the seasons progress. By late summer the creek can be reduced to just a trickle, though we haven’t seen evidence that it has a tendency to dry out entirely.