The National Parks With Waterfalls You Can Swim Below

At the nation’s most photographed waterfalls, the ranger’s warning is often the identical: keep out of the water. Yosemite’s Emerald Pool, Haleakalā’s Pools of ʻOheʻo, and the bottom of Zion’s Lower Emerald Pool are all now closed to swimmers after deaths, rockslides, and onerous expertise. Yet of the 63 nationwide parks, a handful nonetheless pair an actual waterfall with a pool the place getting in is sanctioned, or no less than tolerated as a long-running native custom. These 5 make that quick record, with what it’s essential to find out about entry, hazards, and whether or not every lives as much as its title.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Midnight Hole on Big Creek

Midnight Hole sits alongside the Big Creek Trail within the far northeastern nook of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, reached from the Waterville neighborhood simply off Interstate 40 close to the Tennessee-North Carolina line. The creek narrows between two boulders and drops a couple of ft over a rock ledge right into a deep, practically round pool so shaded by hemlocks it’s darkish sufficient to earn its title. Reached by a stroll of lower than two miles, it is among the most persistently advisable swimming holes in the complete park system.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park drew extra recreation visits than every other nationwide park in 2025, in response to National Park Service statistics launched in March 2026, and, not like most nationwide parks, it prices no entrance price. That reputation cuts each methods at Midnight Hole: the pool will get crowded on summer season weekends, and the park’s official water-safety steering cautions that swimming wherever within the Smokies carries actual danger from slick, algae-covered rocks and currents which are stronger than they appear, significantly for anybody tempted to leap from the encompassing boulders. Adventurers can proceed one other half mile up Big Creek Trail to Mouse Creek Falls, a taller cascade higher suited to viewing than swimming. Neither waterfall has lifeguards or posted depth markers, so smart hikers examine present circumstances earlier than diving in.

Shenandoah National Park: Cedar Run Falls in Whiteoak Canyon

The Cedar Run-Whiteoak Circuit, off Skyline Drive close to Syria, Virginia, is a two-waterfall loop by means of certainly one of Shenandoah’s steepest canyons. Six named falls run down the Whiteoak Canyon aspect of the loop, fashionable with photographers however typically too rocky and quick for swimming. Cedar Run Falls, on the return leg, is the aspect hikers come again for: the creek slides over smoothed granite right into a swimming gap deep sufficient for a cooling dip, with a pure rock chute above it that locals get pleasure from as a water slide.

The full circuit is a demanding, multi-mile day hike with a steep climb again out of the canyon, and Shenandoah’s granite stream beds are notoriously slippery when moist. The National Park Service has documented deadly falls from waterfall overlooks elsewhere within the park, and it doesn’t designate Cedar Run as an official swimming space. Visitors wade and swim there at their very own danger relatively than underneath any formal park endorsement. An entrance price applies for Shenandoah, and the trailhead parking heaps fill early on summer season and fall weekends. For a shorter outing, hikers can flip round at Cedar Run Falls with out ending the total loop.

New River Gorge National Park and Preserve: Glade Creek Falls

Glade Creek flows by means of a quieter, less-visited nook of New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, which was redesignated from a nationwide river to a full nationwide park in December 2020. The National Park Service describes the creek plainly: it “has several small falls, cascades, and pools that are local swimming holes.” The largest of them, Glade Creek Falls, spills down tiered sandstone steps that span the width of the stream earlier than accumulating in a pool beneath.

Access runs alongside the Glade Creek Trail, with the shortest path to the falls a couple of mile from the campground trailhead; hikers ranging from the higher trailhead close to Kates Falls face a for much longer spherical journey of near 9 and a half miles. Because it sits away from the park’s well-known New River Gorge Bridge and its whitewater rafting runs, Glade Creek sees far fewer crowds than the park’s headline points of interest, which makes for a calmer swim but additionally fewer different hikers round if one thing goes fallacious. There is not any entrance price. Water ranges shift with rainfall, although, so a creek that could be a mild wade in late summer season can run excessive and quick after storms.

Grand Canyon National Park: Elves Chasm

Elves Chasm is a travertine grotto set right into a aspect canyon alongside the Colorado River, roughly 116 miles right into a typical rafting journey by means of Grand Canyon National Park. A brief waterfall pours over layered travertine right into a turquoise pool shaded by maidenhair fern and cottonwood, and river-runners have made a practice of climbing the ledge beside the falls to leap or slide again into the water beneath.

The catch is entry. Elves Chasm has no street and no maintained day-hike path; it’s reached nearly solely by multi-day Colorado River journeys, both with a industrial clothing store or by means of the National Park Service’s noncommercial river allow system, which allocates launch dates by means of a aggressive weighted lottery. A punishing, unofficial cross-country route known as the Royal Arch Route does connect with the chasm on foot, however the National Park Service doesn’t keep it, and it calls for canyoneering abilities and river-crossing expertise effectively past typical backcountry climbing. For practically everybody who swims at Elves Chasm, the journey there may be the bigger dedication. The pool itself is a short, well-earned cease alongside a river journey that may take every week or extra.

Virgin Islands National Park: Reef Bay Falls

Virgin Islands National Park on St. John was established in 1956, largely on land donated to the federal authorities by conservationist Laurance Rockefeller. The park’s Reef Bay Trail descends by means of dry forest to the coast, passing Taino petroglyphs carved into rock beside a freshwater pool partway down, earlier than reaching Reef Bay Falls itself.

The falls are ephemeral, fed by rain relatively than a spring, so the waterfall, and the swimming pool at its base, can run dry for stretches of the yr, particularly outdoors the wetter late-fall and winter months. When it’s flowing, the shaded pool beneath is a real reward after a sizzling, humid descent. Many hikers organize a ship pickup at Reef Bay itself relatively than retracing the uphill hike again to the trailhead, and the National Park Service often affords ranger-guided hikes alongside the route that embrace stops on the petroglyphs. Because movement is unpredictable, anybody hoping to swim underneath the falls ought to examine current rainfall and path circumstances earlier than setting out, and deal with a dry streambed because the likelier end result.

Check Conditions Before You Pack the Swimsuit

What separates these 5 from the waterfalls that at the moment are off-limits just isn’t that they’re safer in any absolute sense. Swift water, slick rock, and chilly temperatures are actual hazards at each certainly one of them. It is that none is at present underneath an outright swimming ban, and every has a neighborhood observe report of holiday makers getting within the water with out incident. That standing can change with a single rockslide, drought, or drowning, the best way it already has at Zion and Haleakalā. Before planning a visit round any of those, it’s value checking every park’s present alerts web page for closures, and treating a park’s common water-safety cautions as sound recommendation.