In the 1800’s, Native Americans used the rock shoals at Cedar Falls as a hunting campsite and a way to cross the Reedy River The shoals were also used to power local mills and in the 1820’s to generate
electrical power.With reminisces of a small Niagara Falls, the Reedy River widens to over 200-feet here, with water cascading over numerous rocks and boulders.
Today it’s a little-known, local swimming hole, but that’s about to change as the park just received a $2.7 million makeover thanks to funds left over from the cleanup effort of a 1996 oil spill, the largest ever in South Carolina, which dumped more than one million gallons of diesel fuel into the Reedy River.
Cedar Falls is maintained by the Greenville County Recreation District and will eventually include canoe launches, picnic shelters and a fishing pier. There’s a nice partially paved hiking trail already open that runs alongside the waterfall and dam and then along the Reedy River. More trails will be opening in the near future. For a complete list of trails, click here.
How to get there: Located at 201 Cedar Falls Road in Fountain Inn. Take I-385 to Hwy 418 and turn right. Turn left on Fork Shoals Road and then makes another left on McKelvey Road. Take a right onto Cedar Falls Road and look for it on the left.