Silver Stairs is a 120-foot cascade in Flathead County, Montana, right beside US Highway 2 between Essex and East Glacier. It is also called Silver Staircase Falls, and is viewed from a roadside pull-off.
The falls
It is a tiered cascade next to the highway, with the foot of the falls sitting at an elevation of about 4,289 feet in the glaciated Canadian Rockies. The stream feeding it is unnamed.
Getting there
A roadside pull-off sits at Mile 188 on US 2, with parking along the road and a walk of about a minute to the falls.
When to go
Flow drops off as summer goes on: a visitor in late July 2021 found little water coming down.
On site
The falls are seen from the pull-off on the highway; a route to the base or the top isn't documented.
History and name
A photograph from the 1930s or early 1940s in the Montana State University WPA collection, titled Silver Stairs Falls and credited to Channing and Clara Howell, shows a woman and two boys looking at the cascade from the edge of US 2 in Glacier National Park, with a concrete wall in the foreground.
Nearby
Rockwell Falls is about 15.1 miles away, Twin Falls about 16.5 miles and Appistoki Falls about 17.8 miles.
Distances are straight-line.
