Palouse Falls

The Palus gave the river, and the country north of the Snake, their name. Sam Fisher, a Palouse man, told how four giant brothers and their sister hunted a giant beaver for the oil in its tail. At each of the river's four falls the beaver slapped its tail as they fought, and here, at the last, its final blow made the falls and the bowl beneath them; the vertical cracks in the basalt are the marks of its claws. The geologists' account is the Ice Age floods, which carved the canyon to some 377 feet deep.

In the fall of 2013 the third- through sixth-graders of Washtucna School, in the nearest town, took up a challenge from their state representative, Joe Schmick: if they thought Palouse Falls should be the state waterfall, they could write the bill. They researched the falls' geology, culture and history and drafted House Bill 2119. In January 2014 a group of them made the icy 275-mile trip to Olympia to testify, and one told the committee the Palouse story of the beaver before adding that the falls had really been made by the Missoula floods. The House passed the bill unanimously in February and the Senate 46 to 3 in March, and on March 18, 2014, Governor Jay Inslee signed it at the falls with the children around him. A sign the students designed stands on the overlook trail.

The park is small, a few fenced overlooks on the rim with the river dropping into the bowl below. Spring brings the heaviest water. The rim is sheer and the unofficial paths down it are dangerous; the fenced overlooks give the full view.