Secluded Tranquility-Upper Butte Creek Falls in Oregon

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Upper Butte Creek Falls drops gracefully over a wide undercut ledge into a large pool surrounded with greenery in the Santiam State Forest in northwest Oregon.
Upper Butte Creek Falls drops gracefully over a wide undercut ledge into a large pool surrounded with greenery in the Santiam State Forest in northwest Oregon.

One of the highlights of any trip to shoot waterfalls in Oregon is a stop by Silver Falls State Park east of Salem. I did just that this morning. But this isn’t a picture of any of the falls in the park. Nope, this is one of a couple of falls on Butte Creek not far from there. You see, it was raining so hard when I got to the park in the morning that I finally gave up after taking only a couple of shots after waiting hours for it to let up.

That left plenty of time to do some exploring during the day, so I set out to find a couple of falls I had read about. I roamed the twisting and turning roads east of Silverton letting my GPS guide the way soon to realize that I was going to have to resort to following written directions. The maze of roads available was just too much for the GPS to handle. After a while I somehow managed to run across a small sign that mentioned Butte Creek Falls. It wasn’t very obvious stuck in the middle of the bushes! The trailhead was a couple of miles down the road and the hike to the falls was a short one. The falls are pretty, set back in a hollow in the woods. I took some closer shots of just the falls, but found that I preferred this shot that gives you a feel for the forested setting.

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4 thoughts on “Secluded Tranquility-Upper Butte Creek Falls in Oregon”

  1. All of these waterfall shots are gorgeous, Monte. Oregon is one of the places on my shortlist of possibilities for where I might like to end up after all of this nonsense in Asia, and your images are only serving to strengthen that argument.

    1. Thanks Matthew. I spent a month out there this spring and still only touched on the photo opportunities the state has to offer. I don’t think you would go wrong making it your home someday.

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