page_title: Arroyo Trabuco
section_title: Pollution and modifications
hierarchical_section_title: Arroyo Trabuco / Watershed / Pollution and modifications
caption_attribution_description: English: Drop structure on Trabuco Creek after a rain.
context_page_description: Arroyo Trabuco is a 22-mile-long stream in coastal southern California in the United States. Rising in a rugged canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County, the creek flows west and southwest before emptying into San Juan Creek in the city of San Juan Capistrano. Arroyo Trabuco's watershed drains 54 square miles of hilly, semi-arid land and lies mostly in Orange County, with a small portion extending northward into Riverside County. The lower section of the creek flows through three incorporated cities and is moderately polluted by urban and agricultural runoff.
  Tongva and Luiseño Native American people lived along the perennial stream in settlements and hunting camps for 8,000 years before the invasion of Spanish colonization. Trabuco is Spanish for a Blunderbuss, a type of shotgun. Local legend attributes a Franciscan missionary friar traveling with the Gaspar de Portolà Expedition in 1769 for the story that a blunderbuss was lost in the upper canyon by the creek, and so the naming of the area. John "Don Juan" Forster received a Mexican land grant in 1846 for the canyon lands and creek and established Rancho Trabuco here.
context_section_description: The Arroyo Trabuco watershed, especially the Oso Creek subwatershed, has been severely affected by suburban development. Lower riparian areas along the creek have been damaged by channelization and contaminated runoff from the creek contributes to pollution problems in Capistrano Bight at the mouth of San Juan Creek at Dana Point. Such pollutants include urban runoff, fertilizers,  heavy metals and oils.
  There is one dam on Arroyo Trabuco, located inside Trabuco Canyon. There are also many drop structures on the lower creek.
caption: Arroyo Trabuco filled with urban runoff after a storm
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