‘Hard to believe': Access is finally coming to one of California's most glorious and inaccessible waterfalls

LOS ANGELES - By all accounts, Mossbrae Falls, the forbidden waterfall of Northern California, is exquisite.

Fed by snowmelt from the slopes of nearby Mount Shasta, it cascades from lava tubes and porous, moss-covered volcanic cliffs, plunging into the Sacramento River and forming a curtain of mist that generates its own rainbows.

The waterfall is surrounded by private land just outside the tiny town of Dunsmuir in Siskiyou County. And there is no safe - or legal - way to reach it.

But more than 20,000 people each year come anyway, trespassing along oil-slicked active train tracks bordering the west side of the river because there are no formal trails.

Two people have been struck and seriously injured by locomotives since 2011, and a woman drowned in the river last spring while trying to reach the falls.

After decades of negotiations and escalating safety concerns, Union Pacific Railroad - which owns and operates the tracks west of the river - signed a 75-year property lease agreement with the city of Dunsmuir that will allow construction of a hiking trail within the tracks' right-of-way and a pedestrian bridge over the river.

"We're just kind of in shock," said Dunsmuir Mayor Juliana Lucchesi on Thursday. "It's hard to believe it's happening because so many people have wanted it for so long and have tried so hard."

Years of negotiations and ‘near misses'

For years, negotiations between Dunsmuir officials, outdoor enthusiasts such as the Mount Shasta Trail Association and Union Pacific have been dogged by delays - even as the safety risks have increased thanks to hordes of selfie-taking tourists descending upon the falls in recent years.

Last year, Ryan Snow, the California state chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the train workers' union, told The Times that engineers dreaded the stretch of tracks near the falls.

"Every single time, it's a near miss" of a train hitting a person, he said, adding: "My nightmare is that a family that isn't paying attention gets hit."

The land east of the falls is owned by Saint Germain Foundation, a religious group that considers the waterfalls and Mount Shasta sacred and has, per local officials, declined multiple offers to purchase some of the property for a trail.

The Saint Germain Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

The breakthrough agreement this week is "an important step toward creating a safe, legal way for the public to access Mossbrae Falls without walking along active railroad tracks," said Daryl Bjoraas, a Union Pacific spokesman, in an email.

"Safety remains our top priority," he added. "Until a formal public access route is complete, we remind visitors to stay off railroad property and never walk on or near the tracks."

The new trail

Mayor Lucchesi said the new trail will be just over half a mile long and start at the city-owned Hedge Creek Falls trailhead.

The project - including the design and construction of the trail and pedestrian bridge, as well as parking improvements and additional restroom facilities - is expected to cost about $21 million and take about five years to complete, Lucchesi said.

After Union Pacific signed the lease, city officials immediately applied for a grant from the Federal Railroad Administration that would pay about 80% of the costs, she added.

Lucchesi said the project is expected to be a financial boon for Dunsmuir, an economically distressed town of about 1,400 people that officially markets itself as California's City of Waterfalls.

More than a dozen notable waterfalls are within an hour's drive of the town, including Hedge Creek Falls, Burney Falls, Faery Falls and three sets of falls on the McCloud River - but the crown jewel, locals say, is Mossbrae.

Lucchesi said the trail project is "the single largest investment in Dunsmuir since the railroad was built in the 1880s."

In fact, the city's federal grant application includes a copy of a news article from 1888 in the former Yreka Daily Journal that describes a tourist - struck by the natural beauty around Mossbrae Falls and Mount Shasta - calling for a national park there.

"I looked upon all this loveliness and said to myself, ‘What a pity that the scenic charms of this country are not to be preserved,'" the article reads. "The thing could be done. It is only a question of the willingness of the Government and the railroad company."

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This story was originally published June 26, 2026 at 5:51 PM.