Schoolhouse Creek (Alameda County, California)
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Schoolhouse Creek is the name of a creek which flows through the city of Berkeley, California in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The creek acquired its name from a school which was sited adjacent to it, the Ocean View School (established 1856). The school was later replaced by the San Pablo Avenue School and still later, the Franklin Elementary School, on the same site. In 2003, Franklin was closed, and in 2004, the Berkeley Adult School moved into its remodeled buildings. On this site at the corner of Curtis and Virginia Streets, a small park, the Schoolhouse Creek Common was opened on May 13, 2006.
Schoolhouse Creek starts up in the Berkeley Hills from a number of small springs just south of Codornices Creek and north of Cedar Street. Its principal tributary, Lincoln Creek begins in the hills at the top of Virginia Street. Schoolhouse and Lincoln have their confluence in the vicinity of McGee and Cedar Streets on the flatlands below the hills. From there the creek runs southwest between Virginia and Cedar Streets. Throughout its upper and middle courses, the creek is culverted and otherwise altered. It continues all the way to San Francisco Bay just north and parallel to Virginia Street. Where it crosses the old right-of-way of the Santa Fe railroad, a massive concrete abutment still exists, the remnant of a bridge and culvert. However, the creek remains underground through this area.
For part of the block between Sacramento and Acton Streets, and again at about Curtis Street, the creek opens up and runs through the yards of homes between Virginia and Cedar Streets, but returns underground before reaching San Pablo Avenue. It emerges from its culvert to empty into a lagoon and marsh which is its shared outlet into the Bay with Codornices Creek, the next drainage north.
