Lower South Falls

Silver Falls State Park / Salem, Oregon, USA

About Lower South Falls


Hiking Distance: 2.4 miles round trip
Suggested Time: 60-90 minutes

Date first visited: 2009-03-31
Date last visited: 2009-03-31

Waterfall Latitude: 44.8858
Waterfall Longitude: -122.66205

Waterfall Safety and Common Sense

Lower South Falls surprised us as it was every bit as attractive as its more famous upper counterpart. This one featured a classically rectangular shape as it dropped 93ft but its wide rectangular shape was quite reminiscent of Rainbow Falls in California’s Devil’s Postpile National Monument in the Eastern Sierras. However, the Silver Falls State Park version also allowed us to walk behind the waterfall.

Come to think of it, almost half of Silver Falls State Park’s 10 main waterfalls had let us go behind them. I guess that was kind of like the park’s M.O. (modus operandi), or at least the thing that made the waterfalls in this park stand out as more than just a collection of waterfalls.

In any case, we reached this waterfall by hiking an additional 0.8 miles downstream from South Falls or about 1.2 miles from the car park. From there, we could have continued along the Trail of Ten Falls for another 1.3 miles to Lower North Falls, but we opted instead to backtrack to the car park and drive to the other car parks to see the other falls on the trail.

In doing so, we probably saved about a mile or two of hiking in the process. So we’ll let you decide whether to do the eco-friendly option or not.

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We started the hike to get to this falls from the same car park as for South Falls. See that page for the driving directions.

For further geographical context, Portland was 42 miles (an hour drive) north of Silverton and 47 miles (also an hour drive) north of Salem.

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Sweep from the bottom to top from the opposite side of the alcove behind the falls


Looking from left to right from directly behind the waterfall

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Tagged with: silver falls, state park, salem, marion, oregon, waterfall, pacific northwest, silverton, behind



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