Kaaterskill Falls, a two-stage waterfall on Spruce Creek in the eastern Catskill Mountains, drops 260 feet in two cascades and ranks among New York’s highest and the eastern United States’ tallest waterfalls. Formed relatively recently through glacial meltwater and stream capture near the end of the Illinoian Stage, it became famous in the early 19th century through Washington Irving, Thomas Cole, and other Hudson River School artists, helping make nearby Palenville a center of landscape art. Later tourism grew with the Catskill hotels. Now protected within New York’s Forest Preserve, the falls remain both a major attraction and a hazardous, closely managed site.