While there are several trails for birding the Indiana portion of Falls of the Ohio, the Kentucky portion is not so easily accessible. Most often birders can be found scanning the fossil beds and surrounding water from the overlook at the interpretive center where a scope is nearly essential (particularly when scanning for shorebirds). 

From mid-August to mid-October, the McAlpine Lock and Dam will often close the upper gates which allow visitors to wade across to the fossil beds in the Kentucky portion of the park. To see the status of the gates, you can call the McAlpine Lock and Dam hotline for a pre-recorded message regarding the current status at (502)775-5056. If you do decide to walk across to the fossil beds, please follow the route highlighted in the photo, crossing across the concrete block below the gates until you reach the far fossil beds. If you do walk across beware of the often slippery and uneven conditions, be very careful on wet surfaces, avoid water crossings whenever possible, consider crossing with another birder, especially if it is your first time, and NEVER attempt to cross when any of the gates are open.

If you have access to a canoe or kayak, it is possible to cross the river over to fossil beds by putting in at the Clark Cabin boat ramp downstream of the falls, just remember to avoid the dangerous rapid conditions closer to the upstream gates and the hydropower dam.  

The Falls of the Ohio National Wildlife Conservation Area is a national, bi-state area on the Ohio River near Louisville, administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Federal status was awarded in 1981. The falls were designated a National Natural Landmark in 1966.

The area is located at the Falls of the Ohio, which was the only navigational barrier on the river in earlier times. The falls were a series of rapids formed by the relatively recent erosion of the Ohio River operating on 386-million-year-old Devonian hard limestone rock shelves. Louisville, Kentucky, and the associated Indiana communities, Jeffersonville, Clarksville, and New Albany, all owe their existence as communities to the falls, as the navigational obstacles the falls presented meant that late-18th-century and early- to late-19th-century river traffic could benefit from local expertise in navigating the 26-foot drop made by the river over a distance of two miles. In its original form, the falls could be characterized more as rapids extending over a length of the river, than as a point-like discontinuity in a river such as Niagara Falls. Still, the falls provided a singular, dramatic, and daunting obstacle to navigation on this important inland waterway.

The first locks on the river, the Louisville and Portland Canal completed in 1830, were built within a bypass canal constructed to provide year-round navigation of the river. The falls were later largely covered by the McAlpine Locks and Dam, built by the Army Corps of Engineers. The taming of the Ohio River at the falls, with the attendant reduction in local flow velocity, has of late led to the covering over of the fossil beds by large and increasing quantities of low-velocity effluvia: although an impediment to the viewing of the fossils, this action serves to protect the portions of the falls covered over by sediment and therefore temporarily immune to direct weathering. However, a significant area of the fossil-rich Devonian limestone rock is still left exposed and is accessible to visitors today. The best time for visitation is during the low water season of the Ohio River between August and October. Removal of fossils is prohibited.

The shallowness of the falls provided a favored crossing point for bison in pre-settlement times and, later, an easy crossing for Native Americans.

In 1990, a section of the area in Indiana became the Falls of the Ohio State Park. An interpretive center is open throughout the year.