The best-known waterfalls in California
Ordered by how much has been written about each place. The numbers match the map.
Yosemite accounts for the drops people have heard of: Upper Yosemite Fall and Lower Yosemite Fall, Bridalveil Fall, Vernal Fall, Horsetail Fall and Ribbon Fall are all here, with elevations between 1,352 and 1,875 meters listed for five of them. Alamere Falls is 22 km from San Rafael, and Huntington Falls (1894) is 5 km from downtown San Francisco. Burney Falls and Mossbrae Falls have no town of any size nearby.
RLQuest knows 351 named waterfalls in California, more than any other kind of place in the state, though only 25 have a Wikipedia article. Lighthouses (45) and ruins (61) have their own pages. Most falls are well away from any town, which makes them longer quests than usual; the app confirms the hike from your recorded route and fills in the canyon on your map.
Every dot is a place. The numbers mark the highlights listed below.
Ordered by how much has been written about each place. The numbers match the map.
A selection, best known first, with the nearest larger town next to each.
and 299 more
RLQuest knows these places too. Which means:
Some of your daily quests lead to a real place near you. The app uses your location to check you were really there.
If you're the first person in RLQuest to complete a quest at a place, it's your first find. The Place Book shows you which kinds of place you're still missing.
Every walk uncovers tiles, each about 350 m across. Over time you can see which corners you know well, and where you've never set foot.
Place data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Borders: geoBoundaries (CC BY 4.0); Canada: Statistics Canada. As of 2026-10-02. The list shows the places RLQuest knows and isn't complete. Photos come from Wikimedia Commons; author and license are credited on each photo.
