At least four basaltic lava flows of Late Pleistocene age comprise the vertical walls surrounding Brandywine Falls.

10,000 years later ice from the Fraser Glaciation receded from Cheakamus Valley releasing melt water and creating Brandywine Creek.

This worked its way downstream and started to erode the looser material and undercut the hard basalt top layer, creating the falls.

The name Brandywine is believed to have come from a wager between two surveyors (Jack Nelson and Bob Mollison) for the Howe Sound and Northern Railway over the height of the Falls.

Another explanation of the naming of the falls comes from around the 1890s when Charles Chandler and George Mitchell passed out there after drinking too much brandywine in their tea.