Corte Madera Creek (San Mateo County, California)
| Corte Madera Creek | |
| Corte De Madera Creek | |
| stream | |
_in_Jasper_Ridge_July_2011.jpg) Corte Madera Creek just below Searsville Dam July 22, 2011
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| Name origin: Spanish language | |
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| State | California |
| Region | Southeastern San Mateo County |
| Tributaries | |
| - left | Coal Creek, Gulch Creek, Rengstorff Gulch, Damiani Creek, Jones Gulch, Hamms Gulch, Alambique Creek, Dennis Martin Creek, Sausal Creek |
| - right | Westridge Creek |
| City | Portola Valley, California |
| Source | |
| - location | Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve. |
| - elevation | 1,950 ft (594 m) |
| - coordinates | 37°19′26″N 122°11′24″W / 37.32389°N 122.19000°W |
| Mouth | Searsville Lake |
| - location | Portola Valley, California |
| - elevation | 351 ft (107 m) |
| - coordinates | 37°24′03″N 122°14′18″W / 37.40083°N 122.23833°WCoordinates: 37°24′03″N 122°14′18″W / 37.40083°N 122.23833°W |
Corte Madera Creek (Spanish for "a place where wood is cut") is a 7.3-mile-long (11.7 km)creek that flows north-northwest to Searsville Dam and then joins with Bear Creek to form San Francisquito Creek in California.
Historically Corte de Madera Creek ran through the Rancho Cañada del Corte de Madera and Rancho Corte de Madera land grants (the latter surrounding the former).
Corte Madera Creek was historically an anadromous steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus) spawning stream; however, access to the creek has been blocked since 1890 by Searsville Dam. Although steelhead can no longer run above Searsville Dam to spawn, stream resident coastal rainbow trout (O. m. irideus) populations live in upper Corte Madera Creek and its tributaries. In a 1996 biotic assessment of upper Searsville Lake and the lower floodplain of Corte Madera Creek, Stanford biologists wrote that the native species likely included steelhead/coastal rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus), sculpin, California roach (Hesperoleucas symmetricus), hitch (Lavinia exilcauda), speckled dace (Rhinichthys osculus), Sacramento sucker (Catostomus occidentalis), Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus), and perhaps three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), Sacramento pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus grandis), Sacramento blackfish (Orthodon microlepidontus), and coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch). They noted that the only native species observed with any regularity in the study area are Sacramento sucker and rainbow trout, and attributed the now depauperate native fish fauna to dislocation of hydrologic connectivity due to the dam, transformation of the habitat above the dam from lotic to lentic, and the fact that Searsville Reservoir harbors many non-native species of centrarchid fishes (sunfish, black bass, and crappie) which prey on virtually all historically native fishes. They noted that federally threatened California red-legged frogs (Rana draytonii) occur in the lotic portions of Corte Madera Creek below the dam but not above, likely due to depredation by non-native fish and American bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeiana).
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