Oneonta Falls is a 100-foot plunge waterfall on Oneonta Creek in Multnomah County, Oregon, hidden at the head of Oneonta Gorge, a narrow basalt slot canyon in the Columbia River Gorge. The gorge was closed to entry after the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire, and the falls can now be seen only partially from a trail above.
The falls
Oneonta Creek, fed by springs, drops in a single vertical plunge inside canyon walls about 200 feet tall. Just above the pool the water strikes a jutting ledge and spreads into a shower-like veil. Standard waterfall inventories record the height as 100 feet, though site accounts describe the drop at about 120 feet. The walls of the gorge are Miocene basalt some 25 million years old.
Getting there
There has never been a trail through the lower gorge: visitors used to wade upstream from the creek's mouth at the Historic Columbia River Highway, sometimes in water up to their shoulders. An agency order running to July 7, 2026 closed the gorge from the highway to the Horsetail Falls Trail bridge, and access remains closed indefinitely. On the January 21, 2026 Ready Set Gorge recreation status sheet the Oneonta Trail was open and Oneonta Gorge was closed. Check with the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area before planning a visit. The best season for flow is not documented.
On site
The top third of the falls is visible from the Horsetail Falls Trail about a quarter mile east of where it crosses Oneonta Creek above the gorge. Inside the gorge, boulders that fell in the late 1990s trapped a logjam, a hiker died there in 2011, and the fire added more logjams and deep pools; stay out while the closure is in place.
History and name
Photographer Carleton Watkins, who may have been the first to photograph the gorge, named the falls after his hometown of Oneonta, New York. The surrounding corridor is preserved as a botanical area with more than 50 wildflower species and ferns, mosses and lichens found only in the Columbia River Gorge. The 1914 Oneonta Gorge Creek Bridge, an 80-foot concrete trestle, carries the historic highway across the creek's mouth.
Nearby
Upper Oneonta Falls is about 0.2 mile away, Horsetail Falls and Ponytail Falls about 0.3 mile, and Triple Falls about 0.5 mile up Oneonta Creek.
Distances are straight-line.