Waterfalls in Tennessee

Tennessee waterfalls: where to go and when

Tennessee's waterfalls are a story of two landscapes. Most of the 427 named falls in the state pour off the edge of the Cumberland Plateau and the Highland Rim, where streams cut through a hard sandstone cap into soft shale and leave the rock overhanging the gorge below. The rest tumble down the old, wet mountains of the Smokies and the Cherokee National Forest on the North Carolina line. State parks hold many of the best-known falls, and entry to them is free.

Where the waterfalls are

The Cumberland Plateau runs across the middle of the state and holds the tallest and most dramatic falls. Fall Creek Falls State Park in Van Buren County has several in one gorge, Savage Gulf and the South Cumberland parks in Grundy County and Marion County have more, and White County hides Virgin Falls, which comes out of a cave and disappears into another.

Closer to Nashville, the Eastern Highland Rim has wide, stepped falls on rivers rather than creeks: Burgess Falls in Putnam County, Cummins Falls in Jackson County and Rock Island in Warren County. In the east, Sevier County has more listed falls than any other county in the state, most of them inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the Cherokee National Forest adds falls from Monroe County north to Carter County.

Waterfalls worth the trip

• Fall Creek Falls is the state's showpiece: 203 feet by lidar survey, though the state park still gives 256. The overlook is steps from the road; the trail to the base is only 0.35 mile each way but steep and strenuous on the climb back. Rockhouse Falls and Cane Creek Falls share a pool a short drive away in the same park.
• Burgess Falls is the last and biggest of four falls on the Falling Water River, all passed on a 1.5-mile loop.
• Cummins Falls is a broad, stepped fall with a swimming pool at the base. An overlook trail needs no permit; the half-mile route up the riverbed to the pool does.
• Virgin Falls, 120 feet, rewards a 9-mile round trip that drops about 900 feet into the gorge and climbs back out; plan most of a day.
• Foster Falls has a paved overlook by the picnic area and a trail to a plunge pool below the 70-foot drop.
• Grotto Falls in the Smokies is the only fall in the park with a trail running behind it, 2.6 miles round trip from the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail.
• Ramsay Cascades, the tallest waterfall in the national park, is a hard 8-mile round trip with more than 2,100 feet of climbing from Greenbrier.
• Bald River Falls can be seen from the car on Tellico River Road, and a new bridge with a viewing platform opened in 2025.

When to go

Spring is the best season across the state, when rain and snowmelt fill the plateau streams, and the state parks run guided waterfall hikes every spring. By late summer and early autumn many plateau falls, Virgin Falls among them, shrink to a trickle, and swimming holes get shallow in drought. In the Smokies the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail to Grotto Falls closes for part of the year. River gorges below dams behave differently: at Rock Island the gorge closes whenever the dam upstream is releasing water.

Parking, permits and closures

Tennessee State Parks charge no entrance fee, and hiking to the falls is free; Cummins Falls is the exception, where entering the gorge takes a permit booked online. At Burgess Falls the upper parking lot is closed for construction and the stairs to the base were removed after flooding, so the falls are seen from the rim. In the Smokies entry is free, but any car parked for more than 15 minutes needs a parking tag: $5 a day, $15 a week or $40 a year, and tags can't be bought on the Roaring Fork road itself. The popular Laurel Falls trail has been closed since January 2025 for rebuilding, and the park now expects it to reopen in 2027.

Safety

Plateau gorges flood fast. In 2017 a flash flood at Cummins Falls trapped about 40 people and two drowned, which is why the gorge now runs on permits and closes when the river rises. In the Smokies drowning is among the leading causes of death, and the park asks visitors not to climb falls or swim near them; at Ramsay Cascades climbing to the top has killed several hikers. Jumping from falls and cliffs is banned in the state parks.