A Trip to Indiana's Tallest Waterfall!

Williamsport Falls Reminds Men Everywhere to Get Their Prostates Checked.

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

My wife grew up hiking in Arizona, endeavoring through picturesque canyons and soaring Saguaro forests, following well-marked trail maps toward inspiring cascades with names like Angel, Havasu, and Seven Falls. So when I told her that we had waterfalls in Indiana too, she was pretty excited. And because she deserves the very best, we started our adventure at the top of the list, driving three hours to Williamsport to survey the tallest waterfall in the Hoosier State.

Williamsport is situated somewhere between Lafayette, Indiana and Danville, Illinois without being particularly close to either of those places. It's the seat of Warren County, itself one of the least populated counties in the state. There are more undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame than there are residents of Warren County, Indiana. There aren't a ton of roads in Warren County, and only about a third of them are paved, but at some point, all roads point to Williamsport, a town built around its waterfall.

We drove the length of Williamsport two or three times before we were able to locate the trailhead, and that wasn't a great sign of things to come. After all, the largest waterfall in a state isn't the kind of thing that should be so easily hidden.

At last, we found the road and bounced the car down its pockmarked tarmac. We bounded from our seats, strapped on our hiking boots, and prepared to enjoy a grey sky day in a grey sky town. We saw the waterfall before the hike even began.

We were nonplussed.

I'm not sure what I expected. I mean, I'm an Indiana homer as much as anyone, but we're not exactly known for our mountain streams or our striking elevation changes. At Williamsport, we were supposed to find a cascading flow of foamy, gurgling water; a million rainbows reflected in the cool mist of the powerful falls. What we found instead was a gentle and intermittent trickle, reminiscent of a geriatric man at a urinal, begging out loud for it to just work.

I'm told that during the right times of the year, the waterfall can be quite impressive, but the time of the year we went was supposed to be one of those right times. It was after the snowmelt and in the midst of spring rains. Even those weren't enough to deliver the waterfall to prominence, and I'm also told that these kinds of days happen far more often than not.

That makes Williamsport a small town with a waterfall, except that it's losing its town and it's losing its waterfall too.

The hike was pleasant enough, a snaking course that climbs and descends from the downstream section of the waterfall, but on this day, the water is still and unmoving, left to pool against debris in the creekbed. Williamsport Falls is swallowed by a thirsty earth before it can make it to the Wabash.

In the 1800s they called the place the Everglades of the North. It was a paradise for hunters and naturalists and wildlife. Presidents and titans of industry came to the marsh for their hunting expeditions. King Edward VII crossed the Atlantic Ocean just to get there.

Most days, the tallest waterfall in Indiana is a dry 90-foot sandstone cliff, but like so many things, it wasn't always this way, another expression of a theme I wasn't even looking for when I made the drive down.

In the 1800s, the flow of water was sufficient enough to power a mill at the base of the waterfall. In Thomas Clifton's 1913 history of the region, he described Williamsport Falls this way:

Right in the heart of town, back of the present water works and light plant, within a stone's throw of Main street, this stream tumbles into an abyss fully eighty feet… The falls are hidden within a canyon skirted with native timber, and one knows nothing of its existence until it suddenly bursts into view.

Of course, that's not what we saw.

So how does that happen? How does a waterfall just die?

In this case, it was development along Fall Branch Stream. Water that used to make its way to the ledge and then splash down and flow to the Wabash River was taken and diverted before it had a chance to get there. Woodlands and prairies were converted into mechanized farms and water was pumped into irrigation systems. Given the choice between choking out their waterfall and planting more corn literally anywhere else in the state of Indiana, they chose the former.

A feasibility study conducted by Purdue University offered solutions that could restore Williamsport Falls, but policymakers demurred at the price tag. Given the opportunity to save the waterfall, they decided not to.

It's another of Indiana's catastrophic ecological failures, a stain in a long line of them when it comes to the state's shameful record on water management. After all, Indiana eviscerated its most consequential wetland and fully drained its largest lake. Why wouldn't it wipe out it's tallest waterfall too?

I'd tell you that the Falls are worth the visit if you're ever in Williamsport, but then, without the Falls, I'm not sure there's any reason to go there.

The Tripadvisor reviews of Williamsport Falls are not awesome. It's ranked second out of two things to do in Williamsport. There is no number one.

Aaron Helman is an author, historian and adventurer from South Bend. You may have seen him around South Bend drinking coffee. Learn more about his work or check out his books at aaronhelman.com.