McWay Falls is an eighty-foot waterfall on the Big Sur coast in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, fed year-round by McWay Creek and known for becoming a rare California tidefall at high tide. The site is closely linked to Saddle Rock Ranch, once owned by Lathrop and Hélène Hooper Brown, who built Waterfall House there before donating the property to the state in 1961 to create a park honoring Julia Pfeiffer Burns. It also figured in early regional infrastructure when Hans Ewoldsen built a Pelton wheel on McWay Creek in 1932 to generate Big Sur’s first local electricity. Landslides and highway reconstruction after the wet winter of 1983 created the sandy beach now beneath the falls.