California
McWay Falls
82 mi from San Jose · ~2.4 hr drive
No height recorded
McWay Falls is a named waterfall in California — about 82 miles from San Jose, CA. Full visit details below.
- State
- California
- Nearest city
- San Jose, CA · 82 mi · ~2.4 hr drive
- Coordinates
- 36.1578°, -121.6724°
From Wikipedia: McWay Falls is an 80-foot-tall (24 m) waterfall on the coast of Big Sur in central California that flows year-round from McWay Creek in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, about 37 miles (60 km) south of Carmel, into the Pacific Ocean. During high tide, it is a tidefall, a waterfall that empties directly into the ocean. The only other tidefall in California is Alamere Falls. Excerpt from the Wikipedia article on McWay Falls, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Visiting McWay Falls
The exact location is at 36.1578°, -121.6724° — open in Google Maps for driving directions from your location.
Before you go: check current conditions with the appropriate land manager — state parks department, U.S. Forest Service ranger district, or National Park Service unit. Trail access, parking, water levels, and seasonal closures all vary. Several waterfalls in our database are seasonal and may run dry between mid-summer and the next rainy season.
If you've visited McWay Falls and have current notes (parking situation, dog policy, seasonality, kid-friendliness), tell us at /contact — we update pages as we learn more.
Stay nearby
Driving in? The nearest documented metro is San Jose, CA — 82 miles away (~2.4 hr drive).
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Other waterfalls within 30 miles
Sources
Location and tag data for McWay Falls comes from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL license) ; the Wikipedia article linked above provides additional history. We do not modify the underlying data — this page presents what's already publicly recorded. To suggest corrections, see our methodology page or contact us.