From Washington To You
Historic black-and-white view of the Dry Falls cliff and coulee lakes near Coulee City, photographed for the Columbia Basin Project in 1935.
Photograph from Bureau of Reclamation Columbia Basin Project albums, National Archives 294037, 1935. Public domain.

From Washington to you

Dry Falls

Dry Falls · Grant County · about 17,000–15,000 years ago

A 3.5-mile cliff in the Grand Coulee is the lip of a waterfall that once dwarfed Niagara.

Dry Falls is a dry waterfall complex in Grant County, now part of Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park and a National Natural Landmark on the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail.

The National Park Service describes the Great Cataract Group around Dry Falls as 3.5 miles wide and 400 feet tall — about four times larger than Niagara Falls. Ice Age floodwaters, hundreds of feet deep, eroded the Grand Coulee and walked the waterfall's lip about 18 miles upstream from its original position near Soap Lake.

Washington's geological survey dates the last flowing water at Dry Falls to about 17,000 to 15,000 years ago. In the 1920s, J Harlen Bretz argued that huge glacial floods carved this country. Peers first dismissed the idea. Later work showed he was largely right. The sources below are NPS and Washington Geological Survey public accounts of the falls.

  • Geography & Geology

Sources (2)

Last reviewed: September 20, 2026

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