Pescadero Creek (Pajaro River)

Pescadero Creek is a 9 mi southward-flowing stream originating in the southern Santa Cruz Mountains. It begins in Santa Clara County, California and flows into Santa Cruz County, before joining the Pajaro River, and thence to Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Pescadero Creek is the center of a critical linkage connecting the wildlife of the southern Santa Cruz Mountains to the Gabilan Range to the south.

History
"Pescadero" is Spanish for "fishing place". In 1861 Manuel Larios testified in the Rancho Las Animas land grant case that "the Castros had an Indian boy who went to this creek to fish". Then John Gilroy testified "the Pescadero draws its name from the fact of our catching salmon there" and "the Castros, I, and an Indian gave it that name in 1814, being a place where we used to catch salmon." Arroyo de Pescadero is shown on diseños from the 1830s.

Watershed and Course
Pescadero Creek runs southerly through the southern Santa Cruz Mountains about 2.5 mi southwest of Gilroy, California. At about two-thirds of its course it is joined by Castro Valley Road, which passes with the stream through Hatfield Canyon, then crosses into Santa Cruz County and receives from the right Star Creek, which drains the eastern flank of 1618 ft tall Atherton Peak. Next, Pescadero Creek passes to the east of 1575 ft tall Mount Pajaro on its way to its confluence with the Pajaro River, about 9.5 mi east of Watsonville, California.

Ecology and Conservation
Pescadero Creek hosts spawning runs of anadromous steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss).

The use of the word "salmon" in the above historical accounts is not specific and may refer to either steelhead trout or salmon. However, Stanford University ichthyologist John Otterbein Snyder indicated in a 1912 report that Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tschawytscha) ran in the Pajaro River watershed. In 1953, local Gilroy resident, Herman Garcia Sr., caught a Chinook salmon in Uvas Creek, a tributary of the Pajaro River watershed. Also, two adult Chinook salmon 60 cm and 65 cm long were caught and released in a 2005 study of San Felipe Lake, although these may have been fall-run Chinook from hatchery releases.

The 1200 acre Star Creek Ranch on the eastern slope of Mount Atherton has been protected by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. The Ranch is bordered by 2 mi of Pescadero Creek and harbors 350 acre of coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forest, oak woodlands and grasslands. It is a component of a critical linkage for wildlife to move from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Gabilan Range to the south.

An analysis of Landsat satellite images in Santa Clara County, California (SCC) showed that 22730 acres of forests and woodlands were highly disturbed in SCC between 1999 and 2009, 37% (34 km2) of which did not overlap with any known wildland fire boundaries, and hence, were confirmed to be lost to new residential or commercial development activities. These included large patches of forest cover lost to roads for new residential developments in the Star Creek drainage and east of Atherton Peak in the Pajaro Hills of southern SCC.