A 100-foot waterfall flows turquoise in Arizona and the only way in is on foot

It’s a 10-mile hike to reach it

Deep inside a side canyon of the Grand Canyon, a 100-foot waterfall drops into pools so blue-green they look like someone swapped out the water.

This is Havasu Falls, and it sits on the Havasupai Indian Reservation, which operates entirely outside Grand Canyon National Park.

You can’t drive here, you can’t day-hike here, and you can’t just show up. The canyon keeps its secrets close, but the people who make it in say it’s worth every step.

The Havasupai have called this canyon home for 1,000 years

The tribe’s name, Havasu Baaja, translates to “People of the Blue-Green Waters,” and Havasu Creek is the reason why.

For over a millennium, the Havasupai farmed corn, beans and squash on the canyon floor, moving water through a gravity-fed irrigation system they built themselves.

Then, in 1882, the U.S. government reduced their land to just 518 acres. It took nearly a century to begin making it right.

In 1975, Congress returned 188,077 acres of ancestral land to the tribe.

The water turns blue-green because of what’s underground

The color isn’t a trick of the light, and it’s not a filter on someone’s phone.

Havasu Creek gets its water from ancient springs where groundwater has moved through limestone for thousands of years, picking up dissolved calcium and magnesium along the way.

When that mineral-rich water hits the surface, calcium carbonate stays suspended in the current.

Those particles, combined with the dissolved minerals, scatter sunlight and produce that electric blue-green you see in every photo.

The same minerals build up along the creek bed, forming travertine rock that shapes the pools and terraces below the falls.

Havasu Falls drops 100 feet through a single chute

The main waterfall pushes through one narrow opening and free-falls roughly 100 feet into a series of plunge pools at the base.

Red-orange canyon walls rise on all sides, with green vegetation lining the edges of the water.

Natural travertine dams hold the pools in place, which makes the water deep enough to swim in and clear enough to see the bottom.

The falls sit about 1.5 miles from the village of Supai and a short walk from the campground, so you can come back more than once during your stay.

Mooney Falls is taller, and getting down to it takes nerve

One mile past Havasu Falls, at the far end of the campground, Mooney Falls drops nearly 200 feet in a single column of water, making it the tallest waterfall on the reservation.

Getting to the base isn’t a stroll.

You descend a steep cliff face using chains, ladders and tunnels cut directly into the rock. People who aren’t comfortable with heights usually stop at the top.

The falls are named for D.W. Mooney, a miner who fell to his death at this spot in 1882.

Beaver Falls is the farthest out and worth the extra miles

About 3.5 miles past the campground, Beaver Falls spreads across a series of limestone travertine terraces, stacking into tiered pools and small cascades you can sit in and soak.

The trail to get there crosses the creek multiple times and runs over rough terrain with ladders in the mix. Plan on five to seven hours for the round trip from camp.

If you keep going past Beaver Falls, the trail eventually reaches the spot where Havasu Creek meets the Colorado River, though most people turn around at the falls.

Two waterfalls that almost nobody photographs were born in 2008

Before August 2008, there was one waterfall between the village and the campground called Navajo Falls.

Then a powerful flash flood hit the canyon and rerouted Havasu Creek entirely, destroying the original falls and carving two new ones in its place.

Now you walk past Little Navajo Falls and Fifty Foot Falls, where the water drops in a wide curtain over a 50-foot cliff into shallow, clear pools.

These two get far less foot traffic than Havasu or Mooney, and the area around them opens up to more sun.

Supai is the most remote town in the lower 48

About 200 people live in Supai Village, 8 miles from the nearest road with no cars in sight. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has called it the most remote community in the contiguous United States.

Mail doesn’t come by truck or van. It comes by mule.

Five days a week, a mule train carries mail, food, medicine and supplies down the canyon trail and back up again.

It’s the only place in the country where that’s still happening, and it has been running this way for a long time.

The canyon reshapes itself after every storm

Havasu Creek doesn’t stay still, and neither does the landscape around it.

Summer monsoons and winter rains send flash floods through the canyon, and those floods move travertine, carve new channels and rearrange the pools.

At the same time, the minerals in the water slowly build the travertine back up, growing the dams and terraces over time. The 2008 flood erased an entire waterfall overnight.

That constant back-and-forth means the canyon you visit in one year can look noticeably different from the one someone visited three years before.

The pools are some of the best swimming in Arizona

Water temperature in the pools runs around 70 degrees, though it can feel colder in spring and fall. Below Havasu Falls, the pools are deep and the walls close in around you in red and orange.

At Mooney Falls, there’s a rocky beach near the base where you can wade and cool off without committing to the full swim.

Beaver Falls has terraced pools where you can sit right on the travertine edge and let the water run over you. Cliff jumping and diving are prohibited across the reservation.

The tribe sets the rules, and they’re serious about them

The falls and the canyon are sacred to the Havasupai people, and the rules reflect that. No alcohol, no drugs, no drones and no weapons on the reservation.

Photography of residents and inside the village is off-limits unless you ask first. Every bag and vehicle gets checked at the reservation boundary.

The tribe asks that you carry all your trash out of the canyon. These aren’t suggestions you can weigh against convenience.

The land belongs to the Havasupai, and visiting it means following their terms.

Get your permit before you book anything else

Day hiking isn’t allowed here.

Every visitor needs an overnight permit from the Havasupai Tribe. For 2026, campground permits run $455 per person for a three-night stay.

If you want a roof, the Havasupai Lodge in Supai Village runs $2,277 for three nights and sleeps up to four people. The campground season goes from Feb. 1 through Nov. 30.

The tribe scrapped the old lottery system for 2026 and moved to first-come, first-served booking, with an early access window in January for an additional fee.

Plan your trip to Havasu Falls in Arizona

To get here, you drive to the Hualapai Hilltop trailhead at the end of Indian Route 18, off historic Route 66.

The nearest major airports are Phoenix Sky Harbor International and Harry Reid International in Las Vegas, each about four hours from the trailhead.

Leave your phone plan behind because there’s no cell service or Wi-Fi in the canyon. All permits and reservations go through the official Havasupai Tribe website.

Check the official website for the most current rules, fees and booking windows before you plan anything else.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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