Wolf Creek drops 225 feet over four cascades into the Genesee River in the ravine, and its name comes from pioneer times when timber wolves dug dens in the valley's gravel banks. The creek began eroding these falls more than 10,000 years ago as glaciers receded, leaving the stream hanging above the river, whose greater volume rapidly cut the larger canyon. Tea Table Rock is a flat picnic area where sandstone once jutted out over the river canyon before park walls were built, providing places to spread a blanket, picnic, or have tea; the same layer creates a flat overlook area farther upriver and forms the caprock of the Lower Falls in Portage Canyon. The area was home to the eastern timber wolf in the early 1800s and is still home to the wolf spider, which stalks prey without a snaring web. The top cascade, called the Wide Expanse, drops 65 feet; the hidden second cascade falls in two sections, the Zig Zag at 38 feet and the Power Chute at 35 feet; the hidden third cascade, Block and Waggle, drops 28 feet; and the bottom cascade, the Shower Curtain, drops 60 feet and is also known as the Diagonal Shower Hole and, in low water, the Cascade of the Marching Bubble Beetles. Although Wolf Creek is polluted from sources outside the park, it supports many aquatic plants and animals, and in the 1920s salt pollution from mining operations was so severe that glasswort, a salt-loving plant usually found in coastal salt marshes, grew along its shores between Castile and Silver Springs, New York.