Teepee Falls

Teepee Falls is a series of falls and cascades in a narrow gorge along Big Creek about half of a mile upstream from where it enters into the Suiattle River. The falls crash down through a narrow, twisting gorge in at least three significant steps with two smaller steps located immediately above (which we were not able to effectively measure or photograph, so for the time being they are not taken into account for the presented measurements). The three most visible tiers of the falls drop 18, 21, and 12 feet respectively. Due to the narrow sculpted shape of the gorge, when viewing the falls from below only about half of the falls can be seen, and only the lowermost tier is visible without obstruction of any sort. The current Suiattle River Road crosses Big Creek on a concrete bridge high above the gorge immediately upstream of the falls, but located adjacent to the base of the falls are two concrete bridge abuntments which indicate the road at one time crossed immediately below the falls, which explains why it's both a named waterfall despite being moderately insignificant, and marked on maps. The old bridge washed out in a flood at an undetermined date (presumably prior to the 1980's) and was relocated to the cliffs high above the creek further upstream to safeguard against future floods.The falls seem to have first appeared on maps as of the 1946 edition of the USGS 1:125,000 Glacier Peak quadrangle, but it was marked well upstream of the location currently associated with the name of Teepee Falls (but without a tick mark to indicated the exact position). While there is a possibility of another waterfall upstream from the Suiattle River Road, this is assumed to simply be a matter of the inaccuracies of the scale of the map. The falls appeared marked at the present location with the 1966 Prairie Mountain 1:24,000 quadrangle.