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The Mad River Falls are accessible at the end of the Otto Mills
Drive which is a seasonally maintained dirt road off Oswego County
Route 17, in the area of the Battle Hill State Forest. Otto
Mills Drive is off the east side of CR 17, which runs north/south
in the northeast corner of the county. You will find the
junction of Otto Mills and CR 17 a couple of miles north of the
hamlet of Redfield. You will drive down this road about 1.7
miles where the road ends. Actually, the road descends to
the river, but it looked more like an ATV trail so we opted to
park and walk. When you reach the river, bear left.
Although we saw several posted signs on properties on the Otto
Mills Drive, the road appears on maps, so it is public! The
only posted sign we saw on our walk was on a bridge that indicated
it was the access to a club on the other side of the river.
After we had been walking about a quarter mile, we came to an
open field which was someone's backyard so we turned back and
found a place to descend to the river. The falls were just
upstream from this point.
The Mad River dumps into the Salmon River, which flows into
Lake Ontario.
Note: After our trip to Mad River Falls, it was
discovered that the Mad River Falls is indicated on our
topographical map downstream from the above location. These
maps have been known to be wrong before! According to this
map, we should have proceeded downstream from the end of the Otto
Mills Drive about twice as far as we went upstream. We are
fairly comfortable that our location is the Mad River Falls but if
anyone reading this hikes into this area and finds another set of
falls downstream, please contact
us.
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