People and the Creek People and the Creek (August 04, 2004)

The booming days after World War II

This is the 12th installment in a series of stories about the people who have lived on the banks of the San Francisquito Creek and its tributaries through the centuries.

By Nancy Lund

At the start of the World War II, East Palo Alto at the mouth of San Francisquito Creek was no more than a dirt road. Menlo Park had reached a population of 3,000 and Palo Alto had 16,500 residents. Portola Valley and Woodside were rural hamlets.

The war effort dominated life. Residents were busy with such activities as victory gardens, civil defense, and collecting rubber and tin cans. Dibble General Hospital, with 2,400 beds, was built on the Menlo Park side of the creek on the site of the old Barron/Latham/Hopkins estate. This time the soldiers who arrived weren't part of a huge encampment such as Camp Fremont was in the first world war. These soldiers were those who had been injured in the South Pacific.

After the war and some two decades of scarcity resulting from the Depression and war shortages, times were good at last. The population of the five towns along the creek banks boomed.

Many people who had come because of the war liked it here and stayed. Others came because of the growth of technological and pharmaceutical businesses. Palo Alto and Menlo Park doubled in population in the 1950s. East Palo Alto, Portola Valley and Woodside experienced rapid growth as well. New construction didn't level off until the end of the 1960s. This enormous growth in housing also meant more highways, industries, schools, and shopping centers and more stress on the watershed.

Attention focused on the creek when tragedy struck in 1952. Six-year-old Clark "Spooky" Sphar Jr. drowned in the creek and was swept away a mile above the El Camino crossing. During a three-day search for his body, four men roped together were nearly pulled in when the lead man lost his footing. A "weasel," an amphibious jeep borrowed from the Presidio, overturned, spilling the sheriff, two deputies and the driver into the tumultuous water.

Overall, 200 pilots, boatmen and foot volunteers had searched. The little boy's body was found six weeks later near Bay Road, 500 feet from the mouth of the creek. His friends said he had just wanted to get his boots wet. Afterward, Menlo Park creek residents lobbied for a six-foot cyclone fence from El Camino to Arbor Road.

Meanwhile, over on Los Trancos Creek near its confluence with the San Francisquito, two generations of tots attended the creekside nursery school run by Martin and Doris Errecca. Pre-school kids, bundled up in the cool shade, made mud pies and played games a safe distance away from its banks.

The burgeoning population of the 1950s meant greater human impacts on the creek system. Open spaces that absorb runoff from rain were paved over. Garbage had been dumped in the creeks from the earliest days, but with more people, more debris entered the creek. Pollutants increased. Steelhead trout started disappearing. Once again, there was talk of a dam at that same site downstream from Searsville-this one would create a reservoir that could contain two billion gallons of water. Once again, it didn't happen.

Although the creek had become less important in most people's lives as they lived ever farther from its banks, the San Francisquito attracted everyone's attention once again on Christmas Eve in 1955.

Next: The devastating 1955 flood.

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