San Francisquito Creek Watershed

By the time America entered World War II in 1941, San Francisquito Creek had been straightened at its outlet to the Bay near the Palo Alto Municipal Airport. The Army built Dipple General Hospital on land near the creek in Menlo Park, and later Stanford Research Institute, the Menlo Park Civic Center, and the U.S. Geological Survey moved in. The Lane Publishing Company, home of Sunset Magazine, also developed lush creekside grounds near the site of Timothy Hopkins’ estate, where he ran the Sunset Seed and Nursery Company. In 1948, the Palo Alto Bird Sanctuary, better known as the duck pond, was dedicated, marking a turn away from traditional creek recreation such as rafting and waterfowl hunting. A postwar construction boom began in the late 1940s and continued for 25 years, and increased housing, commercial development, and roads brought more runoff into streams and greater environmental stress. In December 1955, floodwaters overtopped the banks at Middlefield Road and Pope/Chaucer Street, and debris in the rain-swollen creek jammed at the Bayshore Highway bridge, sending residents fleeing after midnight and damaging 1,000 homes. More flooding in 1958 helped persuade Santa Clara County voters to create a flood control district, and although streams south of San Francisquito were lined with concrete and riprapping and other flood control work was done on San Francisquito, full channel lining was not carried out. Water stayed within the creek banks during the next 40 years, but agencies continued to regard the creek as a potential flood source, and the complexity of multiple jurisdictions made change difficult. Flooding returned in February 1998, reviving fears and appeals for protection. In the 1960s, the Army Corp of Engineers proposed a dam in the upper watershed between Searsville Lake and the Stanford Golf Course, while a by-pass channel was also considered, but downstream efforts appeared to lessen some flood risk, federal authorities judged other communities more in need, and the by-pass was rejected as too costly. A growing environmental consciousness in the 1960s also led to rejection of major industrial development in the baylands; instead, the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center opened in 1969 beside an enlarged marshlands preserve. Menlo Park voters also rejected several Willow Road Expressway plans that would have affected the creek’s riparian habitat, and concern for preserving the foothills in the upper watershed led to the Committee for Green Foothills in 1962, the creation of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District in 1972, and a later Palo Alto ban on industry in foothills west of Interstate 280. By 1976, Searsville Lake was closed to the public and became part of Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, and in 1986 the Palo Alto Yacht Harbor closed when voters decided further dredging cost too much financially and environmentally. Although many residents in the first part of the 20th century had used the creek and baylands as a dumpsite, careful sewage treatment and better refuse disposal were gradually adopted. Highly treated wastewater now flows into the creek near its mouth, where fishing is allowed at the edge of the bay, and in 1991 the former city refuse disposal site was redeveloped as J.F. Byxbee Park, honoring the city engineer who had foreseen the need to buy baylands property in the 1920s.

Palo Alto, California · United States