The Shawnee Hills' wet-weather cascade at the edge of its namesake wilderness, small but very scenic in the Forest Service's words, and best caught within days of rain.
Winter through spring
Big water window
in a typical year
Rain fed
What drives it
Burden Branch
Climatology
Data on this page
Burden Branch is ungauged
USFS Shawnee
Managed by
their rules govern
Trail status, closures and safety rules belong to each falls' managing agency, named and linked on every page.
The season
What fills Burden Falls, and when
Burden Falls runs on an intermittent southern Illinois stream: winter and spring rain build the show, summer usually takes it away. The Forest Service's current page describes the wilderness and calls the falls small but very scenic, an expectation-setting phrase we pass along verbatim.
Typical best flow: Winter through spring
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What the agency itself says
Of course, there is a small, but very scenic waterfall located on the southern edge of the wilderness.
Shawnee National Forest (US Forest Service)Multnomah Falls in autumn: a Columbia Gorge falls that keeps respectable flow year round, and the standard against which most falls seasons get measured. “Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Multnomah Falls, fall color - 3” — Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region — Public domain
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Current flow at Burden Falls
Rain-fed falls carry the color of their watershed: Blackwater Falls runs amber with tannin from spruce and hemlock bogs upstream, and its volume tracks the last month of Appalachian weather. “Blackwater Falls (15437499241)” by Benjamin Smith from United States, CC BY 2.0
Getting there
Access, in the agency's words and ours
The falls sits near the road on the southern edge of Burden Falls Wilderness, per the Forest Service, with unmarked paths to the base ledges; hunting seasons bring the agency's caution about backcountry travel.
The reliable big-water window is Winter through spring. Burden Falls runs on an intermittent southern Illinois stream: winter and spring rain build the show, summer usually takes it away. The Forest Service's current page describes the wilderness and calls the falls small but very scenic, an expectation-setting phrase we pass along verbatim.
Burden Branch has no USGS gauge near the falls, so the seasonal pattern above is the flow guide for Burden Falls, and Shawnee National Forest (US Forest Service) is the source for current conditions on the ground.
Yes, most summers, to bare sandstone. Locals treat it as a rain gauge with scenery; December through May is its dependable half of the year.
Shawnee National Forest (US Forest Service). The falls sits near the road on the southern edge of Burden Falls Wilderness, per the Forest Service, with unmarked paths to the base ledges; hunting seasons bring the agency's caution about backcountry travel. Trail status, closures and safety rules are theirs, and their page is linked on this one; nothing here overrides what they publish.
Yosemite Falls in May, running on snowmelt that will be gone by late summer. The National Park Service tells visitors the falls can be dry by August, which is why every falls page here starts from its watershed. “Tourists below Yosemite Falls (39832011431)” by Mike McBey, CC BY 2.0
The tallest of Starved Rock's canyon falls, with an agency that publishes the flow calendar outright: falls run March through June, may dry out by late June, and return as January icefalls.
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