Pheasant Creek Falls

The falls are located off the Nestucca Byway, southeast of Tillamook. Follow US 101 14 miles south of Tillamook and turn left onto Blaine-Nestucca River Road. Follow this road for about 11 ¾ miles. At this point, you should see signs for Clarence Creek Falls pointing towards the left, and directly across the road is another road that leads in the opposite direction. Turn right at this junction, cross the Nestucca River and proceed for a little over 4 miles to an intersection. Turn right again, following the direction of a sign marking "trail". Follow this road downhill to the parking area and trailhead. The Niagara Falls trail departs from here and winds down an easy mile to the falls and a picnic table near its base.Pheasant Creek Falls is the superior attraction of the paired waterfalls at the end of the Oregon's Niagara Falls trail. With a considerably larger drainage area than the stream producing neighboring Niagara Falls, Pheasant Creek drops over a scenic two-stepped fall - first rolling over a rounded 18-foot tall drop into a narrow alcove, then plunging freely for 106 feet into a huge amphitheater doused on all sides with moss and lichen. Because Pheasant Creek isn't a large stream at all, as the volume of the stream subsides during the summer the falls become an excellent spot to take an invigorating shower during the hottest days of the year. The Siuslaw National Forest officially lists the falls at 112 feet tall, and though there seems to only be one source corroborating this figure, the measurements we took in March of 2013 seem to align pretty closely. Chances are the Forest Service did not measure the smaller upper tier of the falls, but even if that is the case, the margin of error of our measurement lines up very nicely with the figure suggested by the Forest Service either way.Confusion has surrounded the naming of the waterfalls along the Niagara Falls trail. First of all, neither of the falls at the end of this trail are on Niagara Creek. Niagara Falls was named due to its proximity to Niagara Point. For the longest time it had been assumed by nearly everybody that the waterfall on Pheasant Creek was the real Niagara Falls, but the Siuslaw National Forest seems to have recently clarified the confusion, asserting that this is NOT the correct waterfall to apply the name Niagara with as is commonly thought. The falls are often referenced as Pheasant Falls or Pheasant Creek Falls, with the latter apparently being the correct form according to the Forest Service.