Adobe Creek , historically San Antonio Creek, is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map , accessed March 15, 2011 northward-flowing stream originating on Black Mountain in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It courses through the cities of Los Altos Hills, Los Altos, and Palo Alto on its way to the Palo Alto Flood Basin and thence to southwestern San Francisco Bay in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Historically, Adobe Creek was a perennial stream and hosted runs of steelhead trout entering from the Bay, but these salmonids are now blocked by numerous flood control structures, including a tidal gate at the creek's mouth and a long concretized rectangular channel culminating in an impassable drop structure at El Camino Real. The co-founders of Adobe Systems both lived on Adobe Creek.
History The Ohlone people were the original inhabitants of Adobe Creek. A large shell mound which once had a group of Indian huts was found near Adobe Creek in Palo Alto. Evidence of a smaller settlement within Los Altos was uncovered in 1971, when an Ohlone burial ground with skeletons—one with ceremonial beads—was uncovered by new construction along Adobe Creek near O'Keefe Lane. The site had other artifacts, and an archeological dig was mounted by Foothill College in 1970. Around this same time, an Ohlone basket was discovered buried in the Creek bank further north. The O'Keefe site has a historical plaque at the entrance to Normandy Lane marking the historic site labeled "Ohlone Indian Village, Town of Los Altos Hills, Historical Site No. 1, Ohlone 10-L0-N11 Village Site Dedicated this day to the Ohlone People Whose ancestors made their homes here April 4, 1973. No. SCI-015. Presented by American Association of University Women of Los Altos". This Ohlone village site had an ideal location situated on the perennial reach of Adobe Creek between Interstate 280 and Foothill Expressway.
On the 1862 Allardt Map the upper creek is called Arroyo San Antonio (San Antonio Creek) and the lower creek is called Arroyo de las Yeguas (Yeguas Creek). Yeguas is Spanish for "mare", and the Mission Santa Clara named it that because they built a corral for mares along the creek's banks near the Bay. Juan Prado Mesa renamed it San Antonio Creek when he was granted Rancho San Antonio in 1839 by Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. The Adobe Creek name appears as early as 1855 on an official surveyor's map, which lists both the Adobe and San Antonio names for the creek.
During the secularization of the missions in the 1830s, Alvarado parceled out much of their land to prominent Californios via land grants. Mesa was a soldier stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco who had become alfarez (officer in command) in 1837. He built a large square adobe, which lasted well into the twentieth century as a crumbling ruin long thought of as a fortification. The site today is on a hill on the southeast side of El Monte Avenue near Summerhill Avenue in Los Altos, California, most of which is located on the territory of the Rancho.
The upper creek originates in the historic Rancho La Purisima Concepcion, which was granted by Governor Alvarado in 1840 to Jose Gorgonio, an Indian living at Mission Santa Clara. Gorgonio moved to the west bank of Adobe Creek near Fremont Avenue in Los Altos Hills. Much of the town of Los Altos Hills, California was located on this Rancho. In 1844 Rancho La Purisima Concepcion was sold to Juana Briones de Miranda, whose family members had accompanied both the Gaspar de Portolà and the Juan Bautista de Anza Expeditions. Her uniquely constructed wood-framed, rammed-earth and adobe brick house, believed to have been built by American sailors who had deserted, is located at 4155 Old Adobe Road on the border between Palo Alto and Los Altos Hills, and is marked by a historical marker at the corner of Old Adobe Road and Old Trace Lane. Designated a California State Historical Landmark in 1954, the 160-year-old Juana Briones home was scheduled for demolition in 2007 because of damage to it by the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. In 2009, it still stands and has been recently documented with a Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS).
After 1831, Mexican rancho owners would logically erect their dwellings on or very near creeks. Locally, Juan Prado's adobe was near Adobe Creek & Juanita Briones' adobe was near Barron Creek. Because they were permanent features of the landscape, creeks were often used as Rancho boundaries. This was true locally, where the Mexican diseño show Adobe Creek as the boundary between Rancho San Antonio and Rancho La Purisima Concepcion. When Americans took over in 1850, speculators bought much of this land. Much of it initially became large self-contained ranches—typically running cattle & growing crops like wheat, barley & oats that required little or no irrigation. That changed in a few decades when it was discovered that orchards and vineyards could thrive here. Such agriculture of course used more water. Local land was cut progressively into smaller holdings, until most of it was subdivided as the population increased. This meant more and more wells, including large ones dug along Adobe Creek by early water companies to serve the little town of Los Altos. The water table inevitably shrank as a result, and alarms about this development appeared, at least as early as the 1920s. In the early 1930s, the Los Altos News reported that the water table, which stood at 120 feet in 1898, was now down to 335 feet.
The Trust for Hidden Villa is a nonprofit educational organization founded by Frank and Josephine Duveneck, who purchased most of the land comprising the upper Adobe Creek watershed in 1924. They opened Hidden Villa as a gathering place for discussion, reflection, and incubation of social reform. Over the following decades, the Duvenecks also established the first Hostel on the Pacific Coast (1937), the first multiracial summer camp (1945), and Hidden Villa's Environmental Education Program (1970), all on the creek's upper reaches.
Adobe Creek Lodge, an English country-style mansion, was built by Consolidated Chemicals vice-president Milton Haas in 1935. It was a destination resort in the 1940s. Bandleaders Jimmy Dorsey and Harry James played there.
John Warnock and Charles Geschke, the co-founders of the Adobe Systems software company, both lived next to Adobe Creek in Los Altos, and named their company after the creek.
The founder of Los Altos, Paul Shoup, picked a premium lot on Adobe Creek for his home from the ranch lands he helped purchase from Sarah Winchester that later became the community of Los Altos. The Paul Shoup House on Adobe Creek is the first property in Los Altos to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Marino, Pam. (2011-10-04) Shoup House First Los Altos Property on National Register of Historic Places – Around Town – Los Altos, CA Patch . Losaltos.patch.com. Retrieved on 2013-07-21.
Watershed and course Adobe Creek drains about , arising at on the northeastern flank of Black Mountain in Los Altos Hills, California. Adobe Creek was once a perennial stream, as evidenced by historical presence of steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Historically, lawsuits were filed to prevent diversion of creek water for irrigation because they caused the creek to run "dry certain seasons of the year". A 1919 lawsuit against upstream creek diversion for "alfalfa fields" and "hog wallows" reads: "From time immemorial...the waters of Adobe Creek have flowed into, over upon and through the lands...from Hidden Villa high in the hills, past the wonderful home gardens of Los Altos to the Santa Clara Valley and on to the sea...Charles K. Field mourns the loss of the song of the brook that made his garden with its rockery an enchanted spot; Shoup's children can no longer wade in the stream, because there is no stream to wade in; acres and acres of McCutchen's rhododendrons are now languishing and dying with unsatisfied thirst." This written record confirms oral histories taken by local historian Don McDonald that Adobe Creek used to flow year-round. It is also consistent with Eleanor Cranston Fowle Cameron's (the sister of Senator Alan Cranston was born in 1909 and they lived on Cypress Court, north of West Edith Avenue in Los Altos Hills) account that in her youth the creek was perennial and that her "father fished the steelhead that ran up from the Bay to the pool below the waterfall". Local lumberman, Herbert Bickell, reported catching steelhead year-round in Adobe Creek until the mid-1950s when the creek's flows became intermittent behind his home on Van Buren Street.
On March 1, 1973, the State Water Resources Board (SWRB is now the California Department of Water Resources) granted water rights to the Purissima Hills Water District to withdraw 2.0 cubic feet per second (cfs) from the perennial reach where the SWRB had documented flows of 3.0 cfs on August 12, 1970, despite protestations by Robert and Mary Stutz who had rights to withdraw 0.005 cfs at Elena and Moody Roads, and Roy and Penny Lave who had rights to withdraw 0.008 cfs near Manresa Way and University Avenue. Today the creek's perennial sections are above Hidden Villa and between Foothill Expressway and Interstate 280 above the Manresa Way bridge.
Adobe Creek's upper tributaries are, in order, the Middle Fork Adobe Creek, then immediately the West Fork Adobe Creek (the West Fork is known locally as Letcher Creek). Next the North Fork Adobe Creek (originating on Page Mill Road near "Shotgun Bend" at an elevation over 1500 feet) joins Adobe Creek by the Duveneck's main house at Hidden Villa. The North Fork Adobe Creek is also known locally as Bunny Creek. The upper watershed of Adobe Creek is completely protected by Hidden Villa and the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District.
Below the confluences of the "three forks", Adobe Creek is joined by three seasonal creeks in Los Altos Hills. The first is Moody Creek (known locally as Silver Creek) and named for George Washington Moody (1824–1909), a farmer who lived along the stream. His home was located on Moody Creek (which flows down along Central Drive and then Moody Court to its confluence with Adobe Creek). Moody built Moody Road in 1867. The next Adobe Creek tributary is Purisima Creek (historically known as Purissima Creek and originating between Altamont Road and Dezahara Way and joining Adobe Creek at Deepwater Lane and Bay Tree Lane) and Robleda Creek (along Robleda Road) in Los Altos Hills. Thence, Adobe Creek departs mountainous and hilly terrain and enters the valley floor to descend through Los Altos, Mountain View, and Palo Alto. The creek's course runs .
From 2003 to 2009, Upper Reach 5 of Adobe Creek (between Foothill Expressway and West Edith Avenue) was restored in an innovative partnership called the Adobe Creek Watershed Group with representatives from the Santa Clara Valley Water District, local residents and representatives of the City of Los Altos and the Town of Los Altos Hills. The $7.2 million project improved flood conveyance capacity in Reach 5, and also enhanced the creek ecosystem by removing the existing concrete banks and bottom, repairing and stabilizing the eroded banks using minimal hardscape, removing many non-native trees, and establishing a riparian area along of bank using mostly shrubs and trees native to the Adobe Creek watershed, as well as non-native California redwoods.
Further downstream, the Palo Alto/Los Altos bike path traverses the creek, running along the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct right of way.