San Francisquito Creek, the largest local watercourse, shaped the lives of native Americans, Spanish explorers, and early Anglo settlers. For perhaps 7,000 years, the native people called Costanos by Spaniards and now known as Muwekma Ohlone lived in settled villages along the creek banks and bay shores, fishing in the creeks, hunting birds, rabbits, and deer, gathering shellfish in the bay, building houses and boats from willow branches and tule reeds, making tools from bones, shells, stones, and plant fibers, and using otter fur, reeds, and feathers for clothing and ceremonial dress. When Gaspar de Portola's expedition arrived in 1769 after failing to find Monterey Bay, the Ohlones were managing their environment to enhance seed production and food for hunted animals, and the expedition camped on the creek's northern bank near this spot. In 1774, a second expedition placed a cross at the earlier campsite to mark a mission location, but in 1776 an arriving party found that the creek could not support a year-round mission, so the site was moved. The creek then became the boundary between the lands of Mission Santa Clara and Mission Dolores in San Francisco. Missionaries tried to convert the Ohlones to Christianity and teach European customs and small-plot farming, but these plans ultimately failed because European diseases killed many Ohlones, while others survived and worked as vaqueros with mission-owned sheep and longhorn cattle. After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821 and the missions were closed or secularized a decade later, Mexican authorities granted large ranches to settlers who continued cattle raising with less farming. After gold was discovered and the United States took possession of California in 1848, rancho life soon ended. Even before the gold rush, English-speaking men had entered the area, some by sailing up the creek; some married rancho daughters and adopted Californio lifestyles, while others cut redwoods in the western hills and hauled timber by oxen to bay wharves for shipment to San Francisco. Lumber demand rose after California became a state in 1850, sawmills moved higher into the hills, forests were denuded, oaks and willows lower in the watershed were cut for charcoal, tanbark oaks were processed for leather tanning, and the wharf at the creek's mouth became a port for steamers carrying passengers and produce, including hay, grain, strawberries, oyster shells, and lumber. As cattle herds dwindled, ranch lands were sold for villages and farms. The creek became the dividing line between San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and its role as a trade route declined after 1863, when the San Francisco-San Jose Railroad was extended across it. In 1876 Leland Stanford began acquiring 8,000 acres near the creek and built a horse farm for champion trotters. After the death of their young son in 1884, Leland and Jane Stanford created a university in his memory, and Leland Stanford Junior University opened in 1891, the same year a new dam created Searsville Lake.