Arroyo Hondo (Santa Clara County, California)

Arroyo Hondo
	Summer low flows in Arroyo Hondo with riparian white alder and foothill pine, Courtesy of Robert A. Leidy PhD, U.S. EPA
Location
Country	United States
State	California
Region	Santa Clara County
Physical characteristics
Source	Confluence of Smith Creek and Isabel Creek
- coordinates	37°23′00″N121°41′34″W / 37.38333°N 121.69278°W [1]
- elevation	1,585 ft (483 m)
Mouth	Joins Calaveras Creek in Calaveras Reservoir
- coordinates	37°27′51″N121°46′36″W / 37.46417°N 121.77667°W Coordinates: 37°27′51″N121°46′36″W / 37.46417°N 121.77667°W [1]
- elevation	771 ft (235 m) [1]

Last updated March 11, 2019

Arroyo Hondo is a northwestward-flowing 13.0-mile-long (20.9 km)^[2] river in Santa Clara County, California, United States, that lies east of Milpitas.^[1] The area is privately owned by the San Francisco Water Department and is closed to public access because of its usage as drinking water. Bounded to the east by Oak Ridge and to the west by Poverty Ridge, Arroyo Hondo empties into the Calaveras Reservoir where it joins Calaveras Creek. It is formed by the confluence of Smith Creek and Isabel Creek which drain the west and east slopes of Mount Hamilton, respectively.

Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is California's 6th most populous county, with a population of 1,781,642, as of the 2010 census. The county seat and largest city is San Jose, the 10th most populous city in the United States and California's 3rd most populous city.

Milpitas is a city in Santa Clara County, California. It is located with San Jose to its south and Fremont to its north, at the eastern end of State Route 237 and generally between Interstates 680 and 880 which run roughly north/south through the city. With Alameda County bordering directly on the north, Milpitas sits in the extreme northeast section of the South Bay, bordering the East Bay and Fremont. Milpitas is also located within the Silicon Valley. The corporate headquarters of SonicWall, Maxtor, LSI Corporation, Adaptec, Intersil, FireEye, Viavi and Lumentum, KLA-Tencor, and View, Inc. sit within the industrial zones of Milpitas. Flex and Cisco also have offices in Milpitas. The population was 78,106 at the 2018 census.

Oak Ridge in Santa Clara County, California, is a ridge forming the east canyon wall of Arroyo Hondo, which drains into Calaveras Reservoir. Black Mountain is its highest point. The first known white settlers on Oak Ridge were the Parks family, who ran cattle on the ridge. Now owned by the San Francisco Water Department, the ridge is private property and is off-limits to most people.

History

Arroyo Hondo means "deep creek" in Spanish. Its Isabel Creek tributary is significant in that the Spanish name for Mt. Hamilton was the Sierra de Santa Isabel, and the highest point was then referred to as Mount Isabel instead of Mount Hamilton. When William Henry Brewer and Charles Hoffman of the Whitney Survey climbed the peak on August 26, 1861, they did not know it had a name, and christened it Mt. Hamilton, although they did correctly place Isabel Valley on their map to the east. When in 1895, the USGS realized that the peak two miles southeast of Mt. Hamilton was as tall (4,193-foot (1,278 m),^[3] they correctly named it Mt. Isabel.^[4]

Spanish or Castilian, is a Western Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers in the Americas and Spain. It is a global language and the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese.

Isabel Creek is a 18-mile-long (29 km) perennial stream which flows northwestly along the eastern then northern flank of Mount Hamilton in Santa Clara County. It joins Smith Creek to form Arroyo Hondo north of Mt. Hamilton and is part of the southernmost Alameda Creek watershed.

William Henry Brewer was an American botanist. He worked on the first California Geological Survey and was the first Chair of Agriculture at Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School.

Watershed

The Arroyo Hondo mainstem is formed by the confluence of Isabel Creek and Smith Creek at the northern tip of Joseph D. Grant County Park at an elevation of 1,585 feet (483 m) above sea level.^[5] It flows northerly to its confluence with Calaveras Reservoir at an elevation of 765 feet.^[1] Isabel Creek begins at about 2,600 feet (790 m) about one mile south of Mt. Helen, then flows north through the Isabel Valley, then east and north of Mt. Isabel and Mt. Hamilton until it is joined by Smith Creek.^[5] Arroyo Hondo joins Calaveras Creek in Calaveras Reservoir. Calaveras Creek is, in turn, tributary to Alameda Creek in Alameda County, California and ultimately flows into San Francisco Bay.

Smith Creek is a 14-mile-long (23 km) perennial stream which flows along the western flank of Mount Hamilton in Santa Clara County. The creek begins near Bollinger Ridge, about 7.7 km SxSW of Mount Hamilton.

Calaveras Reservoir is located primarily in Santa Clara County, California, with a small portion and its dam in Alameda County, California. The reservoir capacity is seismically restricted, approximately 30,000 acre⋅ft (37,000,000 m³). In Spanish, Calaveras means "skulls".

Calaveras Creek is a waterway that starts near Martinez, Texas and runs for fifteen miles to its mouth at the San Antonio River. It is the source of Calaveras Lake where it is dammed near Elmendorf. Calaveras means skulls in Spanish.

Ecology

Arroyo Hondo still has remnants of native coastal rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus), which several conservation organizations have attempted to protect. Impassable falls are now present on upper Arroyo Hondo, but the rainbow trout in its Smith and Isabel creek tributaries are assumed to be native, as California roach (Hesperoleucus symmetricus) and Sacramento sucker (Catostomus occidentalis occidentalis) are also present above and below the falls.^[6]^[7] The California Academy of Sciences collected a steelhead trout specimen in 1898 on Isabel Creek.^[8] Also, both Smith Creek and Arroyo Hondo were recorded in 1905 by John Otterbein Snyder as anadromous steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus) streams.^[9]^[10] Speckled dace (Rhinichthys osculus) were collected by John Otterbein Snyder in 1898 in Arroyo Hondo and Isabel creeks, but not by Scoppettone and Smith in 1978, nor by Leidy and Bronwen in 2013, and their status in the creek remains uncertain as is true of most of their former sites in the central coast.^[11]^[12]

The rainbow trout is a trout and species of salmonid native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in Asia and North America. The steelhead is an anadromous (sea-run) form of the coastal rainbow trout(O. m. irideus) or Columbia River redband trout (O. m. gairdneri) that usually returns to fresh water to spawn after living two to three years in the ocean. Freshwater forms that have been introduced into the Great Lakes and migrate into tributaries to spawn are also called steelhead.

The California roach is a cyprinid fish native to western North America and abundant in the intermittent streams throughout central California. Once considered the sole member of its genus, it has recently been split into a number of closely related species and subspecies.

Catostomus is a genus of fish belonging to the family Catostomidae, commonly known as suckers. Most members of the genus are native to North America, but C. catostomus is also found in Russia. Fish from different species of the genus are known to readily hybridize with each other.

Foothill yellow-legged frogs (Rana boylei) and California red-legged frogs (Rana draytoni) are present in Upper Alameda, Arroyo Hondo, Smith, and Isabel creeks.^[6]

The foothill yellow-legged frog is a small-sized 3.72–8.2 cm (1.46–3.23 in) frog from the genus Rana in the family Ranidae. This species can be found in the Coast Ranges from northern Oregon, through California, and into Baja California, Mexico as well as in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Range in California. The foothill yellow-legged frog is a Federal Species of Concern and California Species of Special Concern.

The California red-legged frog is a species of frog found in California (USA) and northern Baja California (Mexico). It was formerly considered a subspecies of the northern red-legged frog. The frog is an IUCN vulnerable species, and a federally listed threatened species of the United States, and is protected by law.

Related Research Articles

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References

1 2 3 4 5 U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Arroyo Hondo
↑ U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map Archived 2012-04-05 at WebCite , accessed March 15, 2011
↑ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Arroyo Hondo (Santa Clara County, California)
↑ Erwin G. Gudde; William Bright (2004). California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names. University of California Press. p. 179. Retrieved 2010-11-21.
1 2 U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Isabel Creek
1 2 Jerry J. Smith (July 25, 2013). Northern Santa Clara County Fish Resources (PDF) (Report). San Jose State University. Retrieved March 12, 2016.
↑ Jerry J. Smith (1998). Steelhead and Other Fish Resources of Western Mt. Hamilton Streams (PDF) (Report). San Jose, California: San Jose State University. Retrieved 2016-03-04.
↑ "Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdnerii". California Academy of Sciences Ichthyology Collection. Retrieved 2010-11-19.
↑ John Otterbein Snyder, United States Bureau of Fisheries (1905). Notes on the fishes of the streams flowing into San Francisco Bay, California in Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1904. 30. General Printing Office. p. 337. Retrieved 2011-08-28.
↑ Robert A. Leidy; Gordon Becker; Brett N. Harvey (2005). Historical Distribution and Current Status of Steelhead/Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in Streams of the San Francisco Estuary, California (PDF) (Report). Center for Ecosystem Management and Restoration. p. 123. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-28.
↑ Jerry J. Smith (1998). Steelhead and Other Fish Resources of Western Mt. Hamilton Streams (PDF) (Report). San Jose, California: San Jose State University. Retrieved 2016-03-04.
↑ Alameda Creek Watershed Historical Ecology Study (Table 8.4) (PDF) (Report). San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI). 2013. Retrieved March 12, 2016.

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[gnis-1] 1 2 3 4 5 U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Arroyo Hondo

[NHD-2] U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map Archived 2012-04-05 at WebCite , accessed March 15, 2011

[MountIsabel-3] U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Arroyo Hondo (Santa Clara County, California)

[4] Erwin G. Gudde; William Bright (2004). California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names. University of California Press. p. 179. Retrieved 2010-11-21.

[Isabel-5] 1 2 U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Isabel Creek

[Smith1-6] 1 2 Jerry J. Smith (July 25, 2013). Northern Santa Clara County Fish Resources (PDF) (Report). San Jose State University. Retrieved March 12, 2016.

[7] Jerry J. Smith (1998). Steelhead and Other Fish Resources of Western Mt. Hamilton Streams (PDF) (Report). San Jose, California: San Jose State University. Retrieved 2016-03-04.

[8] "Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdnerii". California Academy of Sciences Ichthyology Collection. Retrieved 2010-11-19.

[9] John Otterbein Snyder, United States Bureau of Fisheries (1905). Notes on the fishes of the streams flowing into San Francisco Bay, California in Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1904. 30. General Printing Office. p. 337. Retrieved 2011-08-28.

[CEMAR-10] Robert A. Leidy; Gordon Becker; Brett N. Harvey (2005). Historical Distribution and Current Status of Steelhead/Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in Streams of the San Francisco Estuary, California (PDF) (Report). Center for Ecosystem Management and Restoration. p. 123. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-28.

[11] Jerry J. Smith (1998). Steelhead and Other Fish Resources of Western Mt. Hamilton Streams (PDF) (Report). San Jose, California: San Jose State University. Retrieved 2016-03-04.

[12] Alameda Creek Watershed Historical Ecology Study (Table 8.4) (PDF) (Report). San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI). 2013. Retrieved March 12, 2016.