Lower Kentucky Falls is a 117-foot waterfall on Kentucky Creek in Douglas County, Oregon, in the Coast Range region. It lies about 14.5 miles east of Florence and roughly 37.2 miles west of Eugene as the crow flies.
At 117 feet it stands in the tallest quarter of Oregon’s 425 waterfalls with a recorded height, ranking 95th; the typical Oregon waterfall is about 54 feet. By form it is a plunge, where the water drops vertically and loses contact with the rock face.
The Coast Range is a belt of steep, deeply dissected hills along the Pacific, wrapped in dense temperate rainforest of Douglas fir, western hemlock, Sitka spruce and red alder. Heavy winter rain feeds short, fast creeks lined with ferns, salmonberry and moss that drop steeply toward the ocean or the Columbia. Kentucky Creek carries 2 recorded waterfalls, and Lower Kentucky Falls is the tallest of them.
Douglas County holds 88 recorded waterfalls, and several are close by. North Fork Falls, a 125-foot veiling horsetail waterfall, is under a mile away. Upper Kentucky Falls, an 88-foot segmented horsetail waterfall, is under a mile away. Beaver Creek Falls, a 20-foot segmented cascade waterfall, is about 3.8 miles away.
Lower Kentucky Falls is located at 43.9311° N, 123.8170° W. The listing is based on the World Waterfall Database, one of the sources compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey in its inventory of waterfalls and rapids of the conterminous United States. The creek name is confirmed against the federal Geographic Names Information System. The exact position has not yet been verified on aerial imagery, so treat the map pin as approximate. Details on trails, parking and access have not been documented for this waterfall yet.