Unnamed Waterfall

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. From the parking lot, cross either of the two footbridges below the swimming area and begin hiking up the Gorge Trail. This waterfall is encountered about half of a mile of a mile up from the start of the trail.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. Progressing upstream along the Gorge Trail, almost immediately following the previous unnamed waterfall on Buttermilk Creek, one will encounter this gorgeous three-tiered stair-stepping fall, also unnamed like its downstream sibling. The falls spill 23 feet in back-to-back-to-back fashion, with steps of 7, 8, and 8 feet respectively. Each step appears so uniform and consistently shaped that it almost appears as if the falls were sculpted by unnatural processes. When the creek is flowing with a substantial volume, the water should spread across all three ledges, making the falls look almost fountain-like in appearance. 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.Though several of the upper waterfalls along Buttermilk Creek have been historically given distinct names, we haven’t been able to find any evidence that this waterfall was ever given a unique name. This seems especially odd since in any of the other waterfall-studded Glens in the Finger Lakes area which were developed as tourist attractions in the late 19th and early 20th century, any feature even remotely resembling a waterfall was romanticized and given a title of some sort. We’ve even seen images of hand-painted postcards pre-dating photographs of the area which depict this waterfall, yet only captioned as “Buttermilk Falls State Park”.