Big Branch Falls

Big Branch Falls is the largest cascade on Big Branch Creek, a wooded feeder stream of the New River. It’s a hike-in waterfall, not a roadside view. Follow Big Branch Trail clockwise 0.7 mile to the falls; turning back there makes a 1.4-mile out-and-back and skips the steeper, more strenuous part of the two-mile loop. The full loop has three rocky stream crossings, where the stones can be slippery. The falls isn’t wheelchair-accessible.

Park at Brooks Falls Overlook and cross River Road to the trailhead. The road is narrow, with single-lane sections. A vault toilet serves the trailhead area; the falls are reached on foot.

Big Branch Creek drops over several ledges along the trail, with the largest fall stepping across sandstone. For a photo, keep the upper drop and the lower creek run together in the frame so the stepped shape reads as one connected cascade.

Layers of shale, limestone and sandstone make the creek’s stair-step falls. The local bedrock belongs to the Mauch Chunk formation, much of it laid down about 345 to 320 million years ago. Red shale gets its color from iron in the exposed sediment that oxidized into hematite.

Big Branch Trail follows an old wagon road through a hollow once used for pasture, hayfields and crops. Remains of the Berry family farm and grist mill still lie near the route, including barn logs, a stone wall, foundation pillars and a root-cellar opening.

Bertha Huffman grew up here and left when she married in 1945. Her father, Daniel Berry, walked five miles each day to work at the New River Lumber Company mill at Longbottom. The family still had no car, electricity, running water or telephone into the 1940s.

Before the forest canopy fills in, the southern part of the park is known for its spring flowers. The show usually runs from late March into late April: look for trout lilies, spring beauties, toothwort, bloodroot and trillium, with Virginia bluebells around the old farmhouse ruins.