Cerrito Creek
Encyclopedia
Cerrito Creek is one of the principal watercourses running out of the Berkeley Hills
into San Francisco Bay
in northern California
. It is significant for its use as a boundary demarcation historically, as well as presently. In the early 19th century, it separated the vast Rancho San Antonio to the south from the Castro family's Rancho San Pablo to the north. Today, it marks part of the boundary between Alameda County
and Contra Costa County
. The main stem, running through a surprisingly deep canyon that separates Berkeley from Kensington, is joined below San Pablo Avenue, by a fan of tributaries, their lower reaches mostly in storm-drain pipes. The largest of these is Middle or Blackberry Creek
, a southern branch.
The creek is named for Albany Hill
, formerly called Cerrito de San Antonio, a prominent (elevation 294 ft.) isolated hill on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay in Albany
(The hill is now some distance inland due to Bay fill). Cerrito Creek, joined by a fan of other small creeks, formerly meandered to the Bay through a large marsh just north of the hill.
The marsh at the creek's mouth also played a curious bit part in history. Regarding such wetlands as useless, 19th and 20th Century settlers set out to fill it, locating a slaughterhouse and dump there. An early 20th Century typhoid scare, however, led to closing of the dump. This left Berkeley, booming with new residents after the great San Francisco Earthquake, without a place for its garbage. A new dump south of the hill was quickly arranged, in what is now the City of Albany. Women of that unincorporated area were upset, but they lacked the vote. One morning, they sought to turn back the garbage wagon with guns. Although they gave up when the sheriff ordered them to disperse, male residents who had formerly resisted incorporation then quickly voted to incorporate the city of Ocean View—soon renamed Albany to avoid confusion with the Oceanview district of Berkeley.
The marsh was eventually filled—rubble from dynamite making and quarrying on Albany Hill contributed. The creek was confined to a small channel. However, tides still rise and fall inland as far as Albany's and El Cerrito's Creekside Parks, respectively south and north of the creek. When a high tide coincides with winter storm runoff (greatly increased by the city's impermeable surfaces), the former marsh area can flood.
The City of El Cerrito is committed to a long-term plan to "daylight" the still-culverted reaches of the creek at the south edge of El Cerrito Plaza, between San Pablo Avenue and the Ohlone Greenway (regional pedestrian/bicycle route under the BART tracks). The cities of Albany and El Cerrito have adopted a long-term plan for a pedestrian-bicycle route mostly along the creek, connecting the Ohlone Greenway to the Bay Trail. This plan is gradually being carried out.
Friends of Five Creeks established some natives and placed a litter can at the short reach exposed at the Ohlone Greenway, but these plantings have repeatedly been devastated by maintenance workers. Between Talbot and Kains, adjacent to the El Cerrito Plaza shopping center
, a state grant to the City of El Cerrito led to the channelized creek being re-contoured in 2003, giving it a more natural flow pattern, native vegetation, and a creekside trail. This project, maintained and improved by Friends of Five Creeks, has been more successful.
The channelized south bank between San Pablo Avenue and Pierce Street was "torn up" by a sewer replacement project in 1998-99 Pierce Street. As part of that project, the Urban Creeks Council was instrumental in having the old sewer pipe broken up so that steelhead could again access Middle Creek. (These anadromous fish have been observed in the creek but there is no evidence of recent successful reproduction.) The City of Albany used mitigation funds to establish native vegetation on the north bank, but the project was rapidly re-invaded by invasives such as blackberry, Cape ivy, and morning glory when that money ran out.
Friends of Five Creeks began intensive work between San Pablo and Pierce in 2000, beginning on the north bank at Pacific East Mall, carrying out restoration required in the mall's use permit. Tasks included removing fencing, building a creekside trail, removing evergreen thornless blackberries that formed thickets more than ten feet high and spanned the creek, and establishing native vegetation. This revegetation has been reasonably successful, although the mall's maintenance contractors sprayed much of the grassland areas with herbicide, and these native grasses have never been re-established. The mall was required to re-plant shrubs, carry out long-promised pollution reduction, and improve its maintenace as a result of this incident.
Since 2004, Friends of Five Creeks volunteers have focused on removing evergreen thornless blackberry and other invasives, planting natives, and installing amenities on the south bank opposite the mall and upstream toward San Pablo, focusing on the ford at Adams Street and the Creekside Parks edging the creek in Albany and El Cerrito. Parkland extends to most of Albany Hill, with grasslands, a willow grove at the mouth of Middle Creek, and mature oak forest on the steep north face of the hill. Thus this complex is an unusual island of urban green space and habitat surrounded by city. Wildlife includes sticklebacks, Pacific chorus frogs, herons, egrets, kingfishers, ducks, hawks, raccoons, and deer.
Berkeley Hills
The Berkeley Hills are a range of the Pacific Coast Ranges that overlook the northeast side of the valley that surrounds San Francisco Bay. They were previously called the "Contra Costa Range/Hills" , but with the establishment of Berkeley and the University of California, the current usage was...
into San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
in northern California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. It is significant for its use as a boundary demarcation historically, as well as presently. In the early 19th century, it separated the vast Rancho San Antonio to the south from the Castro family's Rancho San Pablo to the north. Today, it marks part of the boundary between Alameda County
Alameda County, California
Alameda County is a county in the U.S. state of California. It occupies most of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 1,510,271, making it the 7th most populous county in the state...
and Contra Costa County
Contra Costa County, California
Contra Costa County is a primarily suburban county in the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 1,049,025...
. The main stem, running through a surprisingly deep canyon that separates Berkeley from Kensington, is joined below San Pablo Avenue, by a fan of tributaries, their lower reaches mostly in storm-drain pipes. The largest of these is Middle or Blackberry Creek
Middle Creek (California)
Middle Creek is a major tributary of Cerrito Creek in Albany, California.The creek runs begins at the confluence of Blackberry Creek and Capistrano Creek, on the western edge of Berkeley's Thousand Oaks neighborhood. It flows west, both above ground and through culverts before discharging into...
, a southern branch.
The creek is named for Albany Hill
Albany Hill
Albany Hill is a prominent hill along the east shore of San Francisco Bay in the city of Albany, California. Geologically, the hill is predominantly Jurassic sandstone, carried to the western edge of North America on the Pacific Plate and scraped off there in the course of subduction. Albany Hill...
, formerly called Cerrito de San Antonio, a prominent (elevation 294 ft.) isolated hill on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay in Albany
Albany, California
Albany is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. The population was 18,539 at the 2010 census.-History:In 1908, a group of local women protested the dumping of Berkeley garbage in their community...
(The hill is now some distance inland due to Bay fill). Cerrito Creek, joined by a fan of other small creeks, formerly meandered to the Bay through a large marsh just north of the hill.
History
The creek played a part in history larger than its size. Because it divided the two land-grant ranches, it became the division between Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. With Alameda County settled more densely in the early 20th Century boom that followed the San Francisco Earthquake, the area just north of the county line became the home of jazz joints, gambling, and other pursuits requiring a light hand from the law. This lasted until a post-World-War-II reform movement in the City of El Cerrito.The marsh at the creek's mouth also played a curious bit part in history. Regarding such wetlands as useless, 19th and 20th Century settlers set out to fill it, locating a slaughterhouse and dump there. An early 20th Century typhoid scare, however, led to closing of the dump. This left Berkeley, booming with new residents after the great San Francisco Earthquake, without a place for its garbage. A new dump south of the hill was quickly arranged, in what is now the City of Albany. Women of that unincorporated area were upset, but they lacked the vote. One morning, they sought to turn back the garbage wagon with guns. Although they gave up when the sheriff ordered them to disperse, male residents who had formerly resisted incorporation then quickly voted to incorporate the city of Ocean View—soon renamed Albany to avoid confusion with the Oceanview district of Berkeley.
The marsh was eventually filled—rubble from dynamite making and quarrying on Albany Hill contributed. The creek was confined to a small channel. However, tides still rise and fall inland as far as Albany's and El Cerrito's Creekside Parks, respectively south and north of the creek. When a high tide coincides with winter storm runoff (greatly increased by the city's impermeable surfaces), the former marsh area can flood.
Restoration
Unsuccessful efforts to bring a portion of the creek out of a pipe when a former lumberyard became Albany Middle School in the 1990s led indirectly to the formation of Friends of Five Creeks, a citizens group. Volunteers with this group have worked since 1996 on this and other local creeks, principally removing invasives, planting natives, and installing amenities including signs and benches.The City of El Cerrito is committed to a long-term plan to "daylight" the still-culverted reaches of the creek at the south edge of El Cerrito Plaza, between San Pablo Avenue and the Ohlone Greenway (regional pedestrian/bicycle route under the BART tracks). The cities of Albany and El Cerrito have adopted a long-term plan for a pedestrian-bicycle route mostly along the creek, connecting the Ohlone Greenway to the Bay Trail. This plan is gradually being carried out.
Friends of Five Creeks established some natives and placed a litter can at the short reach exposed at the Ohlone Greenway, but these plantings have repeatedly been devastated by maintenance workers. Between Talbot and Kains, adjacent to the El Cerrito Plaza shopping center
El Cerrito Plaza (Shopping Center)
El Cerrito Plaza is a shopping center in El Cerrito, California, a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area.-Location:El Cerrito Plaza is located on the southern border of El Cerrito between San Pablo Avenue and the BART rail tracks...
, a state grant to the City of El Cerrito led to the channelized creek being re-contoured in 2003, giving it a more natural flow pattern, native vegetation, and a creekside trail. This project, maintained and improved by Friends of Five Creeks, has been more successful.
The channelized south bank between San Pablo Avenue and Pierce Street was "torn up" by a sewer replacement project in 1998-99 Pierce Street. As part of that project, the Urban Creeks Council was instrumental in having the old sewer pipe broken up so that steelhead could again access Middle Creek. (These anadromous fish have been observed in the creek but there is no evidence of recent successful reproduction.) The City of Albany used mitigation funds to establish native vegetation on the north bank, but the project was rapidly re-invaded by invasives such as blackberry, Cape ivy, and morning glory when that money ran out.
Friends of Five Creeks began intensive work between San Pablo and Pierce in 2000, beginning on the north bank at Pacific East Mall, carrying out restoration required in the mall's use permit. Tasks included removing fencing, building a creekside trail, removing evergreen thornless blackberries that formed thickets more than ten feet high and spanned the creek, and establishing native vegetation. This revegetation has been reasonably successful, although the mall's maintenance contractors sprayed much of the grassland areas with herbicide, and these native grasses have never been re-established. The mall was required to re-plant shrubs, carry out long-promised pollution reduction, and improve its maintenace as a result of this incident.
Since 2004, Friends of Five Creeks volunteers have focused on removing evergreen thornless blackberry and other invasives, planting natives, and installing amenities on the south bank opposite the mall and upstream toward San Pablo, focusing on the ford at Adams Street and the Creekside Parks edging the creek in Albany and El Cerrito. Parkland extends to most of Albany Hill, with grasslands, a willow grove at the mouth of Middle Creek, and mature oak forest on the steep north face of the hill. Thus this complex is an unusual island of urban green space and habitat surrounded by city. Wildlife includes sticklebacks, Pacific chorus frogs, herons, egrets, kingfishers, ducks, hawks, raccoons, and deer.
See also
- Baxter CreekBaxter CreekBaxter Creek or Stege Creek , is a three-branch creek in Richmond and El Cerrito, California, United States forming the Baxter Creek watershed. The creek has three sources and flows from the Berkeley Hills to Stege Marsh and the San Francisco Bay...
- Codornices CreekCodornices CreekCodornices Creek , long, is one of the principal creeks which runs out of the Berkeley Hills in the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. In its upper stretch, it passes entirely within the city limits of Berkeley, and marks the city limit with the adjacent city of Albany in...
- Fluvius InnominatusFluvius InnominatusFluvius Innominatus or Central Creek is a creek in Richmond and El Cerrito, California in western Contra Costa County. There is one main source and a secondary unnamed tributary. The creek drains into Hoffman Marsh and then flows into the bay through Point Isabel Regional Shoreline's Hoffman Channel...
(Central Creek) - List of watercourses in the San Francisco Bay Area