McWay Falls

About this place

McWay Falls is a 24-metre waterfall on the Big Sur coast of central California, flowing year-round from McWay Creek in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, about 50 km south of Carmel in a straight line, into the Pacific Ocean. At high tide it becomes a tidefall, emptying straight into the ocean; the only other tidefall in California is Alamere Falls. In 1924 Congressman Lathrop Brown and his wife bought a ranch overlooking the cove from the homesteader Christopher McWay and built a house on the cliff opposite the falls. Later, rock and earth slid into the cove and the waves spread them into a sandy beach beneath the falls where none had been before, so the falls now reach the sea only when the tide is in. A thread of water falls from a tree-covered cliff onto a small sandy beach in a crescent cove, where turquoise and white waves break around a large green-topped rock. Visitors walk a short trail of about 800 metres, through a tunnel under Highway 1, to an overlook of the falls. The beach cannot be reached because of the high cliffs.