Waterfall Wednesday: Stockbridge Falls

Today on the blog we’re going to the eastern-most location that I visited during my 50 New York Waterfalls project – Stockbridge Falls. Stockbridge Falls is located along Oneida Creek in Munnsville, New York which is about 30 miles southeast of Syracuse.

I visited this waterfall on the same day that I visited Cowshed Falls, Bridge 7 Falls, Carpenter Falls, Bucktail Falls, Tinker Falls, and Pratt’s Falls. It was a very full day of hiking!

I had a difficult time finding Stockbridge Falls and after a long day I was exhausted and almost gave up looking before I found it. The guidebook that I was using was showing a different way to get to it and the map was a little deceiving.

It originally had me entering a trail from Jones Road. There really isn’t a trail and it’s on private property, but the owner was nice enough to allow me to take a walk through anyways. There’s not really a good view of the falls from this direction and I don’t recommend going that way for anyone wanting to visit.

After almost giving up, I turned onto Falls Road from Stockbridge Falls Road. There’s a small bridge and there’s a beautiful view of the main part of the waterfall right from the road. A couple of parking spots along the road also make it easy to pull off to view.

Stockbridge Falls is made up of a series of cascades. The water travels in a series of drops – 10, 15, 6, 2, 10, and 5 feet. The sources I saw said it added to a total of 100 feet of small cascades (there must be more drops lower on the creek that they were accounting for.)

Painting Stockbridge Falls

My favorite part of Stockbridge Falls is that there were blossoms right next to the creek. Somehow when I pictured doing this waterfall project, I thought that by visiting the sites during the late spring/early summer that there would be a lot of blossoms within the shots. Surprisingly that didn’t seem to be the case. This is one of the only locations that fell into that vision and so I made sure that the reference photos I took included the beautiful blossoms.

The other thing that I particularly liked about creating this painting was playing with the texture of the big, wet rocks and how the water created a visual trail from one corner of the painting to the other.