Martin Falls

Martin Falls is found adjacent to Steamboat Rock along the shores of Banks Lake in Grand Coulee. The falls can be seen next to Highway 155 about 1.3 miles north of the main entrance to Steamboat Rock State Park, or a little over 2 miles south of the Northrup Point picnic area. If the falls are flowing, they're hard to miss.Martin Falls is the only officially named waterfall which drops over the lofty walls of Grand Coulee and into Banks Lake. The falls occur as Devils Creek, one of the largest streams which empty into the east side of Banks Lake, plunges over a sheer basalt cliff for 342 feet before impacting a bench, and then plunging over a second smaller cliff for another 69 feet into a smaller grotto. Because of the dry climate in this part of the state, despite having a drainage basin which covers approximately 20 square miles or so, the falls only flow for a few months out of the year and are entirely reliant on consistent (heavy) precipitation or snow melt in order to sustain its flow. Generally the falls may flow for 2-3 months out of the year at best, and often not even consistently. We surveyed the falls toward the end of April 2017 after significant snow fall events had occurs across Eastern Washington, and the volume was already considerably reduced from what we initially expected. The falls will usually be entirely dry by early to mid May.Initially this waterfall was simply known as Devil's Punchbowl, a name which has been more formally applied to the large lagoon in Banks Lake to the east of Steamboat Rock but early postcards caption the falls with the same name (likely due to its proximity to the feature of the lake). These same postcards also show the falls flowing with an immense volume of water, which suggests that perhaps early agricultural activity in the basin well upstream from the falls may have contributed to a much heavier flow at one time. The exact origin of the name Martin is not yet known.