Panel of Contributors: People and the Creek -- 1950s floods stir protection efforts Panel of Contributors: People and the Creek -- 1950s floods stir protection efforts (January 26, 2005)

This is the 14th part of the story of the people who have lived on the banks of the San Francisquito Creek and its tributaries through the centuries.

By Nancy Lund

In the aftermath of the great Christmas flood of 1955, not surprisingly the creek gained increased attention from its neighbors. People spent thousands of dollars to protect their homes from future episodes. Officials of the towns along its banks studied the options and worked to protect the citizens from another deluge. This had been the hundred-year flood. Was the area safe from such enormous flooding for another century?

Despite the flood control work, just three years later, in 1958, another thousand residents had to flee their homes when once again the creek left its banks. This resulted in more excavation, grading, widening and repair of levees. Berms were added.

Even as crews cut overhanging trees to prevent their tumbling into the creek and lined banks with concrete and rock walls, some observers worried about degradation of the creek. Letters about protecting the creek were fired off to city councils and newspapers.

Heated arguments between creekside residents of Menlo Park and the Stanford Board of Trustees occurred in 1959 and 1960. Apartments as high as fifteen stories were under consideration on the creek's banks on four acres of Stanford land along the road then called Willow, now Sand Hill Road. The final plan moved the three Willow Creek Apartments with a total of 54 units nearer to the road and lowered them to three stories.

Daily life on the creek's banks went on. In the mid to late 1960s, just off Sand Hill Road on a little street by the creek called Perry Lane, future author Ken Kesey held court. Among the poets, musicians and artists who partied at his house were another future author, Larry McMurtry, and future spiritual leader Ram Dass.

This was the era in which the one major change was made to the creek's profile. It was realigned near its mouth in 1963 to allow an expansion of the small Palo Alto airport. In 1969 the Baylands Nature Interpretive Center opened nearby. It was located close to the Palo Alto Bird Sanctuary, fondly known as the duck pond.

The raging waters of winter took two more lives. In 1967 four-year-old Scott Schmidt of Woodside fell in. In 1969 Stanford student Arthur Yablonsky drowned when he became entangled in the ropes of his raft. The four-man yellow craft was sucked down in a whirlpool near the golf course's fourth hole.

The creek was still a special place to little boys. Adam Swezey of Fulton Street, nine years old and a member of a club called "Capital Conquer Creek Club", wrote to the Palo Alto Times on January 1, 1970:

We try to make the creek fun for kids to play in... It is like a national park. I give free tours to show the beauty of the creek. If you would like to go before the creek turns into a dump, contact me. Some things you will see are waters of no return, cave trail, roly-poly trail, slide trail, etc. I think the creek is the best place in Palo Alto. Even the poison oak is pretty.

More than 700 new neighbors moved onto the San Francisquito banks in 1970. Eleven new buildings containing 700 apartments went up on twenty-seven oak studded acres of Stanford land adjacent to the three buildings constructed in 1960. Called Oak Creek, it became Palo Alto's largest apartment complex. Amenities included five swimming pools, a nine-hole putting green and three tennis courts. The popular trail behind the complex is one of the places where modern residents can enjoy the ambiance of the creek.

And the search for solutions continued. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, private engineering firms, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) undertook seven different studies between 1958 and 1995. The various cities and towns and the two counties of the watershed and private groups added their own research. Agencies such as the Department of Fish and Game weighed in. At least 10 different solutions to the flooding problem were proposed, analyzed, costed out, and debated: expand Searsville Lake, remove the Searsville Dam, replace bridges with wider ones, build diversion conduits, widen the channel, create more upstream storage with another high or low dam, or line the creek bed with concrete. Preventing a devastating flood while preserving the natural qualities of the creek wasn't going to be easy.
Next: The search for solutions continues.

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