Upper 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. From the parking lot, cross either of the two footbridges below the swimming area and begin hiking up the Gorge Trail. Upper Buttermilk Falls is encountered just a few hundred feet, and few dozen steps up, from the start of the trail, before reaching the first switchbacks.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. Upper Buttermilk Falls can be partially viewed in tandem with Buttermilk Falls from some locations around the swimming area, and while only about 150 linear feet separate the two falls, there is a long standing historical precedent for the two falls to be considered separate entities. The upper falls drop a total of 74 feet in a single sliding cascade which has a run of about 250 linear feet, and an average width of about 40 feet. 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.Unlike some of the other streams in the area which are well-endowed with waterfalls, we haven’t been able to find much documentation of proper historically accurate names for the various falls along Buttermilk Creek. About half of the falls on the creek seem to be colloquially named at best, and some even don’t seem to have any sort of recognized or even casual names as far as we’ve been able to discern. This waterfall has most frequently been known as either Upper Buttermilk Falls or Second Falls, though neither name seems to have been more than colloquially adopted.