Santiago Creek

Santiago Creek is a major watercourse in Orange County in the U.S. state of California. About 34 miles (55 km) long, it drains most of the northern Santa Ana Mountains and is a tributary to the Santa Ana River. It is one of the longest watercourses entirely within the county.^[2]

Historically the Santiago Creek provided water for the Tongva Native American group, whose territory extended over much of northern present-day Orange County and into the Los Angeles Basin. Native Americans have inhabited the Santiago Creek and Santa Ana River watershed for at least 12,000 years. The creek was named by the Spanish Gaspar de Portolá expedition of 1769, which crossed the Santa Ana River near the Santiago Creek confluence.^[3] A tributary of the creek was the subject of a short-lived silver boom in the 1870s. Present-day Santiago Peak shares its name with the creek. Irvine Lake dam was constructed in 1929, marking the end of the creek's free-flowing state. The creek now contributes a small amount to the municipal water supply of Orange County via pipelines from Irvine Lake.

The Santiago Creek watershed covers about 100.6 square miles (261 km²) in northern Orange County. Much of the upper course of the creek remains in its natural state, while the lower section is now urbanized and includes parts of the cities of Tustin, Orange, and Santa Ana. The creek above Lake Irvine is perennial, but below the lake, the ephemeral creek runs in a channelized course. Along the course of Santiago Creek, there are many recreational areas, including the Cleveland National Forest and Irvine Regional Park.

Course

The main stem of Santiago Creek rises in the Cleveland National Forest, between Santiago Peak and Modjeska Peak, which together form the Saddleback formation. From there, the creek winds west-northwest for the first half of its course and southwest for the remaining half. It receives water from over five major tributaries and is free-flowing for most of the upper half of its course.^[4][5]

From the steep and narrow canyon between Santiago and Modjeska peaks, the creek runs south-southwest then turns sharply west, paralleling a ridge that separates it from the community of Portola Hills. It winds west-northwest, then after leaving the boundary of the national forest, it passes through the city of Modjeska and meets the first major tributary, Harding Canyon, from the right, 22 miles (35 km) from the mouth. As it continues bending northwards, Baker and Silverado creeks merge with Santiago Creek from the right. As the creek passes underneath Santiago Canyon Road, the canyon widens to a broad alluvial valley. The valley walls pull away and decrease in height as the creek begins to sink into the soft deposits and is almost dry by the time it reaches the second Santiago Canyon Road crossing. The creek then empties into Irvine Lake, which is also fed by Limestone Canyon, a left-bank tributary.^[4][5]

Santiago Creek then exits the Santiago Creek Dam, the dam forming Irvine Lake, 19 miles (31 km) from the mouth. The creek below the dam is initially an ephemeral watercourse due to diversions from the reservoir.^[6] Directly after leaving the dam the creek meets Fremont Canyon, a right bank tributary, and crosses underneath California State Route 241. It then flows northwest, bisecting Irvine Regional Park, and receives a tributary from Weir Canyon from the right. It then is dammed by the Villa Park Dam to form a flood control reservoir as it enters the city of the same name. The creek then flows in a flood control channel for the remaining 7 miles (11 km) of its course.^[4][5]

Flowing roughly southwest between the cities of Orange and Santa Ana, and after receiving Handy Creek from the left, the creek then crosses under California State Route 55 and 22, bisecting Hart Memorial Park and Santiago Creek Park in the process. The creek then crosses under Interstate 5 and continues west into the Santa Ana River. Its confluence is on the river's left bank, inside the Riverview Golf Course. About 10 miles (16 km) past the confluence with Santiago Creek, the Santa Ana River enters the Pacific Ocean.^[4][5]

Watershed

The Santiago Creek watershed occupies much of the northwestern end of the Santa Ana Mountains, and is located generally north of the city of Irvine. It is bounded on the south by the San Diego Creek, Aliso Creek and Oso Creek drainage areas, on the southeast by the Trabuco Creek watershed, and on the north and west by tributaries of the Santa Ana River. At 100.6 square miles (261 km²) in size, the Santiago Creek watershed makes up about 3.6% of the entire 2,400-square-mile (6,200 km²) Santa Ana River watershed - but makes up about 65.7% of the 153.2 square miles (397,000 km) of Santa Ana River watershed within Orange County, and 10.6% of 948-square-mile (2,460,000 km) Orange County. Most of the watershed is unincorporated, but about a third lies within Anaheim, Villa Park, Orange, and Santa Ana.^[7]

Elevations in the watershed range from 5,687 feet (1,733 m) at Santiago Peak to 108 feet (33 m) at the Santa Ana River confluence. Although only tiny parts of the Santiago Creek watershed do not lie within Orange County, it closely borders Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The Santa Ana Mountains rise higher on the right bank of the creek (the north bank) than on the left (south) bank, and parts of the northernmost course of the creek run through the Puente Hills.

The major tributary watersheds, in order of their appearance from southeast to northwest (roughly in downstream order) are: Harding Canyon, Williams Canyon, Silverado Canyon, Ladd Canyon (tributary of Silverado Canyon), Baker Canyon, Black Star Canyon, Fremont Canyon, Blind Canyon, and Weir Canyon on the right bank; and Limestone Canyon and Handy Creek on the left bank. Of the right bank tributaries, the Silverado Canyon, Ladd Canyon and Fremont Canyon sub-watersheds each extend a little into Riverside County. The Silverado/Ladd Canyon subwatershed is the largest, and Williams Canyon is the smallest.^[4]

Tributaries

Santiago Creek has 10 major tributaries along its course, most of which come in while the creek flows through Santiago Canyon. Fremont Canyon is the largest by length, while Silverado Canyon is largest by size. The largest sub-tributary watershed is Ladd Canyon, a tributary of Silverado Canyon. Many of the upper tributaries are spring-fed and perennial. An uppercase R stands for right bank, and L is for left bank.

Geology

The dominant geological feature in the Santiago Creek watershed are the Santa Ana Mountains. The northern portion of the mountains, which Santiago Creek drains, is composed of rocks from the pre-Triassic to the Quaternary (251–2.6 MYA).^[8] These rocks consist primarily of slate, sandstone, conglomerate, limestone, and other sedimentary rocks.^[9] The uplift of the Santa Ana Mountains began approximately 5.5 million years ago along the Elsinore Fault Zone, which extends north from near its namesake Lake Elsinore area.^[10]

History

Setting

Hundreds of years ago, Santiago Creek was a free flowing perennial stream that spilled out of canyons in the Santa Ana Mountains and wound for the rest of its course over a broad, alluvial floodplain to its confluence with the Santa Ana River. Live oaks, sycamores, alders, and other types riparian vegetation lined the banks of the creek and its major tributaries. The canyon supported a wide variety of birds, amphibians, fish and mammals.

Native people

Most of the creek originally either lay in the territory of the Acjachemen or the Tongva, two large Native American groups of Orange, Los Angeles, and San Diego counties. The Acjachemen lived to the south and the Tongva to the north of Aliso Creek, a southwest-running stream that flows to the Pacific Ocean in an area generally to the southeast of the Santiago Creek watershed. As that part of the Acjachemen-Tongva boundary terminates at the Aliso Creek headwaters, it is uncertain whether Santiago Creek was part of which native group. However, archaeological evidence suggests that the upper portions of the creek were once settled by Native Americans, and some historical accounts, including that of the Spanish conquistadors, mention that the Acjachemen lived along the upper Santiago Creek canyon.^[11]

The early inhabitants of the Santiago Creek Canyon lived in semi-permanent villages close to running water. The upper canyon belonged to the Acjachemen, while the lower (northwestern) part of the watershed, likely downstream of present-day Irvine Lake, was in Tongva land. They subsisted on a diet of primarily acorns, using the acorn powder to form a type of porridge known as atole. The Native Americans had been drawn to the area by the abundant riparian zone found along Santiago Creek and some of its perennial tributaries. They ground the acorns in stone mortars carved into huge boulders, and some of these mortars remain in the Santiago Creek area today.^[12]

Spanish occupancy

In 1769, the Gaspar de Portola expedition crossed the Santa Ana River very near the mouth of Santiago Creek. They named the creek for the Apostle Saint James the Greater, as that day was July 25, his Feast Day. They named the canyon Cañada de Madera, or Timber Canyon. Santiago Peak, then called Kalawpa by the Native Americans,^[13] was later renamed after the creek. The Spanish left accounts mentioning the Juaneño, which was the name given to the Acjachemen by the Spanish after the founding of Mission San Juan Capistrano farther southeast at the confluence of San Juan and Trabuco creeks. In the 1780s, a land grant, the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, was created on 78,941 acres (319.46 km²) of land between Santiago Creek and the Santa Ana River, near the present-day sites of Orange and Anaheim.^[13]

The 25-mile (40 km)-long, 2.5-to-6.5-mile (4.0 to 10.5 km)-wide Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana was one of three adjoining ranchos in the area, the Rancho San Joaquin and the Rancho Lomas de Santiago.^[6] One of the first settlers in the Santiago Creek watershed was Jose Pablo Grijalva, a former Spanish soldier, who arrived in 1784. He and his son-in-law, Jose Antonin Yorba, grazed cattle in the Santiago Creek Canyon beginning in the 1790s. He built an adobe house beside Santiago Creek in 1796. Later settlers included the Peraltas and Sepulvedas.^[14]

American settlement

A well-known Native American massacre occurred in 1831 in present-day Black Star Canyon, which was called Cañada de los Indios (Indian Canyon) by the Spanish. This massacre was actually one in a series that involved the Native Americans' theft of horses from the Spanish ranchos. A party of American fur trappers was sent to take back some horses stolen by the Gabrielino. They followed hoofprints into Cañada de los Indios, and when they came upon a Native American village, they drove the people out and took back the remaining horses. Many Indians were killed in the process, but some managed to escape. The village site is now noted as California Historical Landmark 217.^[15]

In 1877, two prospectors, Hank Smith and William Curry, discovered silver in present-day Silverado Canyon. Several mines immediately sprang up in the area, the largest of which was known as the Blue Light Mine. During this period, the town of Silverado rose at the confluence of Silverado Creek and Santiago Creek and the boom continued for over three years.^[16] Although the height of the mining was in the three or four years following the discovery of silver, smaller-scale mining continued for decades after the initial boom had ended. The last commercial operations at the Blue Light Mine ceased in the 1940s. The mine has continued to issue small amounts of toxic tailings, including arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury, for which the Trabuco Ranger District of the Cleveland National Forest began cleanup work on September 8, 2008.^[17]

In 1883, Helena Modjeska, a well-known Polish actress, purchased a house in Santiago Canyon near the mouth of Harding Creek, the first large tributary. She hired an architect, Stanford White, to build her a mansion in what is present-day Modjeska. She left the Santiago Canyon area in 1906, and three years later she died of an unknown reason. Modjeska Peak, rising 5,496 feet (1,675 m) above Santiago Creek's headwaters, was named in her honor.^[16]

Water infrastructure

By the 1920s, the Orange/Anaheim/Villa Park area was a prospering agricultural region that depended on water from the Santa Ana River and Santiago Creek for irrigation. Santiago Creek would unleash seasonal floods in the winter and then dwindle to a trickle at the height of the dry season, creating problems for irrigation. The Serrano Irrigation District was formed in 1928 and partnered with the Irvine Company and El Modena's Carpenter Irrigation District for the construction of Santiago Dam, impounding Lake Irvine. Construction work begun in 1929 and the dam was completed in 1931. Eventually, the agricultural areas in the lower watershed were replaced by residential and commercial zones, but the city of Villa Park and some of the city of Orange still receive their water form Irvine Lake.^[18][19]

The Villa Park Dam, forming the Villa Park Reservoir further downstream on Santiago Creek, was completed in 1963 also by the Serrano Irrigation District, which by that time, had changed its name to the Serrano Water District. The lower course of Santiago Creek ended up being channelized in the mid-20th century after the passage of the Orange County Flood Control Act of 1927. The dam is now owned by the Orange County Flood Control Division.^[20]

Biology

Historically, Santiago Creek supported a rich riparian community along its shores. The Santa Ana Mountains supported a large population of California grizzly bear, now extinct, and other large mammals such as mountain lions, bobcats, and coyotes. Today, the upper Santiago Creek remains much in its natural state, while the lower creek is listed as highly disturbed and no longer supports much native vegetation and wildlife.^[21] Historically, the creek is known to have sustained a population of steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), but with the construction of Villa Park and Santiago Creek dams, their anadromous spawning runs from the sea have been destroyed. However, 13 specimens of the land-locked form of steelhead, rainbow trout, were fin-sampled recently from Harding Canyon and genetic analysis has shown them to be of native and not hatchery stocks.^[22] Historically, at least two tributaries to Santiago Creek, Silverado and Harding Canyons, also supported steelhead.^[23] The watershed now primarily supports introduced fish in Lake Irvine.

Recreation

Lake Irvine was opened for fishing in 1941. A fishing license is not required to catch fish at the 700-acre (2.8 km²) reservoir.^[24] The lake was stocked with fish in the 1930s beginning with largemouth bass, catfish, and panfish. The lake is still stocked weekly with fish.^[25]

Irvine Regional Park, created in 1897, now occupies much of the lowermost Santiago Creek Canyon, between Santiago Creek Dam and Villa Park Reservoir. The park was created officially on October 5 of that year as "Orange County Park", and originally it consisted of 160 acres (0.65 km²) of woodland along the riparian course of Santago Creek.^[26] At first, Santiago Creek flowed freely through the park, but with the completion of Santiago Dam in 1931, that was no longer possible. A boating pond constructed in 1913 then had to be filled with water piped in from Lake Irvine. The park was expanded to its current size of 477 acres (1.93 km²) in 1971, and has hiking, fishing, boating, and a small zoo.^[6]

The Cleveland National Forest was created in 1908 and expanded by 1925 to 424,000 acres (1,720 km²). The upper Santiago Creek watershed now lies within the Trabuco Ranger District of the Cleveland National Forest.^[27] Several hiking trails run up the steep canyons in the upper Santiago Creek watershed, leading up tributaries such as Black Star Canyon and Silverado Canyon. The Joplin Trail leads up the canyon above the town of Modjeska to the summit of Modjeska Peak.

Other recreational areas and historic sites within the area include:

References

Works cited

• Hoover, Mildred Brooke; Kyle, Douglas E. (1990). Historic spots in California. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-80471-734-6. 

External links

• Santiago Creek Watershed Preservation & Restoration Project
• Santiago Creek Greenway Alliance
• Orange County Watershed