| Directions
This waterfall is not publicly
accessible. |
| County: |
St. Lawrence |
| Town: |
Parishville |
| USGS Map: |
Parishville |
| Waterway: |
St. Regis River
West Branch |
| Latitude: |
N 44.63661o
|
| Longitude: |
W 74.84381o
|
| Drop: |
NA |
| Type: |
NA |
| Region: |
Off NY 72 in the
village of Parishville |
| Parking: |
NA |
| Trail type: |
NA |
| Length of hike: |
NA |
| Difficulty: |
NA |
| Accessibility: |
Private |
|
Just west of the village of Parishville, the Old Potsdam-Parishville
Road will bear off to the right. A short distance down this
road, the Coon Road will exit to the right. At the end of this
short road, you will come to the Allen Falls Reservoir.
This situation is a bit confusing. At the lower end of
the Allen Falls Reservoir is the Allen Falls Dam. However,
below this dam is what is left of Whitaker Falls. Allen
Falls is actually 1.4 miles further downstream. If you look
at very old maps of this area, Whitaker Falls is noted. On
current maps, however, it is not. According to information
provided by the Parishville Town Historian Emma Remington, in the
1800s, Luke Whitaker ran a sawmill at this location that was
powered by the falls. At some point the Whitaker Falls Dam
was built here but in 1927 it was replaced by the current Allen
Falls Dam. The dam that was built
here impaired public access to this waterfall. It is an
interesting perspective to think about what this location used to
look like. The reservoir, now a small lake, provides boating
and fishing. Before the dam, this was probably just a
typical river, probably not more than 50 feet wide, that cascaded
down the Whitaker Falls!
From the parking area at the end of Coon Road you can see that
the dam is about 25 feet high. Water coming over it and from
the hydro facility there drops onto the top of Whitaker
Falls. You can also see that there is another drop of 25 to
35 feet, but your vantage is such that the specifics are not
clear. Physically, it looks like you can get down to the area,
but the facility here is run by Brookfield Power and there are no
trespassing signs posted. We are researching this, but the
area is not publicly accessible. If anyone has any information about these waterfalls,
we would be very interested in hearing
from you. Note that there is another Whitaker Falls in Lewis
County's town of Martinsburg. The St. Regis River flows into the
St. Lawrence River almost on the US/Canada border a few miles
northeast of Massena, New York.
|
