Murchison Falls National Park lies at the northern end of the Albertine Rift Valley, where the sweeping Bunyoro escarpment tumbles into vast, palm-dotted savanna. Firstgazetted as a game reserve in 1926, it is Uganda's largest and oldest conservation area, hosting 76 species of mammals and 451 birds.

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It is named after the breath-taking spectacular water falls on the Great River Nile which in 1864, a British explorer Sir Samuel Baker chose to name Murchison, in honor of the distinguished President of the Royal Geographical Society. The dramatic waterfalls which is the mainstay of the national park is where the Nile, the world’s longest river contracts from a grand stream to explode violently through a narrow six metre gorge into the cauldron of turbulent water 40 meters below ,popularly known as the Devil’s cauldron. According to Samuel Baker, the water falls is the most important object throughout the course of the river.

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Regular visitors to the riverbanks include herds of elephants, giraffes and buffaloes; while hippos, Nile crocodiles and aquatic birds are permanent residents. Murchison Falls has received many notable foreign visitors. In 1907, Winston Churchill hiked, boated and bicycled up the Nile corridor to the falls. He was followed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1909 during a hunting safari that cost, by today’s prices, a phenomenal US$1.8m! In 1951, the falls provided a backdrop for Humphrey Bogart in John Huston’s famous movie, The African Queen which was filmed on location along the Murchison Nile and on Lake Albert. British royals have also visited Murchison, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) in 1930 and the Queen Mother in 1959 the fauna diversity of the park. The least happy celebrity visitor was Ernest Hemingway in 1954 that literally dropped in. His intention was simply to overfly the waterfall but his plane clipped an old telegraph wire strung across the gorge and cart wheeled into the river line forest. Hemingway and his wife were rescued and taken to Butiaba where their rescue plane crashed on takeoff

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