Rocky Falls
A 40-foot cascade pours over pink and purple volcanic rock into a swimmable pool on Rocky Creek, a short walk from its parking lot and picnic area.
Get directionsOpen in Google Maps
Rocky Creek squeezes through a crack in 1.5-billion-year-old rhyolite and spills down a stair-stepped ledge about 40 feet high into a deep, calm pool. The constriction is a shut-in, the Ozarks term for a place where a stream is pinched between hard volcanic rock that will not erode the way the surrounding stone does, and it gives Rocky Falls a look found almost nowhere else in Missouri.
The Park Service keeps a developed day-use spot here: parking off Highway NN, picnic tables and grills, an accessible vault restroom, and a trailhead register. A very short trail drops from the picnic area to the pool, and the falls double as a trailhead for hikers, since the 0.4-mile Rocky Falls Trail ties into the Current River section of the Ozark Trail. In spring and summer the pool under the cascade is one of the best-loved swimming holes in the Riverways.
Good to know before you go
- Fees
- Free (NPS park brochure). No entrance pass is required anywhere in Ozark National Scenic Riverways (NPS Fees page).
- Hours and seasons
- Open year-round (NPS park brochure: trails and park open year-round). No posted hours.
- Parking
- Parking lot off Missouri Route NN next to the picnic area; the falls are a very short trail walk from the lot (NPS). The NPS park brochure puts the falls off Rt. NN, 9 miles southeast of Eminence; the site is also reached from Winona.
- Accessibility
- The NPS place record lists Rocky Falls as wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom; confirm current conditions with the park.
- Nearest town
- Winona, Missouri
- Region
- Southeast Missouri
- Coordinates
- 37.093383, -91.209575
What you can do there
- Picnic tables
- Grills
- Accessible vault restroom
- Information kiosk
- Trailhead (Rocky Falls Trail, 0.4 mile, and Ozark Trail access)
- Trash receptacles