August 12, 2005 The number of known waterfalls in California's Whiskeytown National Recreation Area has been upped to four. Shaded from sight for nearly half a century, Whiskeytown Falls is finally back on the map.
The search for the more than 300-foot-high waterfall, which lay hidden for 40 years among the park's dense brush and manzanita, required sharp eyes, trained ears, patience—and some 21st-century clues.
Several years ago, Russ Weatherbee, the park's wildlife biologist, was sorting through old maps when he stumbled across one from the 1960s marked with a note that read "Whiskeytown falls" near Crystal Creek.
"I just decided to go looking for it," Weatherbee told the Associated Press. "But I went in and hiked up and never found anything. The map had been more than a mile off."
While evaluating global imaging system maps during the spring of 2003, he noticed the steepness of the contour lines. He also saw there were indications of white water. Primed with maps and new knowledge in hand, Weatherbee and a friend embarked upon a hike, which veered off the established trail and ascended a rugged, overgrown logging road through thick brush and manzanita, an evergreen shrub found in the West.
"We could hear it before we could see it," Weatherbee told the San Francisco Chronicle. "But the terrain was so steep that we didn't want to go down at first because we were afraid we wouldn't be able to get back up."
Their curiosity, though, spoke louder than their trepidation. The pair hiked down from a ridge above the falls, finally scouting a vantage point where they could see the Z-shaped trajectory of the falls.
Whiskeytown Falls had been found. Again.
The park had been logged in the 1940s and '50s and the logging road wound its way almost to the base of the falls, said Jim Milestone, the park's superintendent. The few people who knew the waterfall existed had kept mum.
"We would've promoted this thing 40 years ago if we had known about it," Milestone said. "It's very hard to see. That's part of the mystique of it, that's why it was hidden for so long."
A new trail expected to open next summer will lead visitors up to the falls, where they can witness the cataract's three tiers plunging down a series of granite chutes and terraces, before neatly cascading into Crystal Creek.
Last Monday was the new trail's groundbreaking ceremony. Named after the father of the 42,000-acre Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, near Redding, California, the James K. Carr Trail to Whiskeytown Falls is expected to be finished by next summer.
Milestone expects an increase in visitation once the trail is complete. On average, nearly 752,000 people visit the park every year, many of whom are drawn to 3,200-acre Whiskeytown Lake.
"Finding a waterfall in the lower 48 just doesn't happen very often," Milestone said. "It's a very beautiful waterfall."
