Pescadero Creek (Pajaro River)
Pescadero Creek is a southward-flowing stream originating in the southern Santa Cruz Mountains. It begins in Santa Clara County, California and flows into Santa Cruz County, before joining the Pajaro River, and thence to Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Pescadero Creek is the center of a critical linkage connecting the wildlife of the southern Santa Cruz Mountains to the Gabilan Range to the south. History. "Pescadero" is Spanish for "fishing place". In 1861 Manuel Larios testified in the Rancho Las Animas land grant case that "the Castros had an Indian boy who went to  this creek to fish". Then John Gilroy testified "the Pescadero draws its name from the fact of our catching salmon there" and "the Castros, I, and an Indian gave it that name in 1814, being a place where we used to catch salmon." Arroyo de Pescadero is shown on diseños from the 1830s. Watershed and Course. Pescadero Creek runs southerly through the southern Santa Cruz Mountains about southwest of Gilroy, California. At about two-thirds of its course it is joined by Castro Valley Road, which passes with the stream through Hatfield Canyon, then crosses into Santa Cruz County and  receives from the right Star Creek, which drains the eastern flank of tall Atherton Peak. Next, Pescadero Creek passes to the east of tall Mount Pajaro on its way to its confluence with the Pajaro River, about east of Watsonville, California. Ecology and Conservation. Pescadero Creek hosts spawning runs of anadromous steelhead trout ("Oncorhynchus mykiss"). The Star Creek Ranch on the eastern slope of Mount Atherton has been protected by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. The Ranch is bordered by of Pescadero Creek and harbors of coast redwood ("Sequoia sempervirens") forest, oak woodlands and grasslands. It is a  component of a critical linkage for wildlife to move from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Gabilan Range to the south. An analysis of Landsat satellite images in Santa Clara County, California (SCC) showed that of forests and woodlands were highly disturbed in SCC between 1999 and 2009, 37% (34 km2) of which did not overlap with any known wildland fire boundaries, and hence, were confirmed to be lost to new residential or commercial development activities. These included large patches of forest cover lost to roads for new residential developments in the Star Creek drainage and east of Atherton Peak  in the Pajaro Hills of southern SCC.