Matadero Creek

Matadero Creek
Arroyo del Matadero Crosby's Creek Madera Creek
stream
Three gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), the only tree-climbing canid in the Americas, den and forage for rodents, grasshoppers and berries near the mouth of Matadero Creek in the Baylands
Country	United States
State	California
Region	Santa Clara County
Tributaries
- left	Arastradero Creek, Santa Rita Creek via the "Stanford Channel"
- right	Deer Creek
Source	Foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains
- location	Los Altos Hills, California
- elevation	640 ft (195 m)
- coordinates	37°22′01″N 122°09′04″W / 37.36694°N 122.15111°W / 37.36694; -122.15111
Mouth	Palo Alto Flood Basin, then Mayfield Slough, then southwest San Francisco Bay
- location	Palo Alto, California
- elevation	0 ft (0 m)
- coordinates	37°25′27″N 122°08′01″W / 37.42417°N 122.13361°W / 37.42417; -122.13361Coordinates: 37°25′27″N 122°08′01″W / 37.42417°N 122.13361°W / 37.42417; -122.13361

Crosby's Creek
Madera Creek

Matadero Creek is a stream originating in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The creek flows in a northeasterly direction for 8 miles (13 km) until it enters the Palo Alto Flood Basin, where it joins Adobe Creek in the Palo Alto Baylands at the north end of the Mayfield Slough, just before its culmination in southwest San Francisco Bay. Matadero Creek begins in the city of Los Altos Hills, then traverses the Stanford University lands and Palo Alto.

Matadero Creek was originally called Arroyo del Matadero on maps from the 1830s and 1840s, and matadero means slaughtering place in Spanish. On the 1862 Allardt Map of the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad, Matadero Creek is denoted as Crosby's Creek. In 1853, Elisha Crosby bought a 250-acre parcel of Rancho Santa Rita, really Rancho Rincon de San Francisquito, from the Robles family, and founded Mayfield Farm, but she lost it only 3 years later. On the March 5, 1863 map "Plat of the Rancho Rincon de San Francisquito", it is denoted as Matadero Creek. On the Palo Alto Topo Map of 1899, it was referred to as Madera Creek, a name which suggests its prior value as a source of timber (madera in Spanish).

In 1875 French financier Jean Baptiste Paulin Caperon, better known as Peter Coutts, purchased land in Mayfield and four other parcels around three sides of today's College Terrace - more than a thousand acres extending from today's Page Mill Road to Serra Street and from El Camino Real to the foothills. Coutts named his property Ayrshire Farm. His fanciful brick 50 foot tall brick tower near Matadero Creek likely marked the south corner of his property. Leland Stanford started buying land in the area in 1876 for a horse farm, called the Palo Alto Stock Farm. Stanford bought Ayrshire Farm in 1882.