Taking a dip in Baxter Creek's Booker T. Anderson branch circa 1910
(photo courtesy of City of Richmond)

Baxter Creek Branches
Originating in underground springs beneath the El Cerrito and Richmond hills, Baxter Creek runs down three narrow watersheds through Canyon Trail, Poinsett, and Mira Vista Parks. Also known as "Bishop Creek" and "Stege Creek," the entire watercourse flowed freely above ground in earlier times.

The three branches join just south of Angelo's Delicatessen near the corner of San Pablo and MacDonald Aves. in Richmond. From there, the single stream flows below ground across the Richmond flats, above ground through Booker T. Anderson, Jr., Park, and finally into San Francisco Bay via Stege Marsh.

A bridge over Baxter Creek circa 1920
(photo courtesy of City of Richmond)

Today, Baxter Creek remains above ground for only about one tenth of its length: quarter-mile sections in Canyon Trail, Poinsett, and Mira Vista Parks; a third-mile section on the east and west sides of San Pablo Ave. near MacDonald Ave.; and another third-mile section in Richmond's Booker T. Anderson, Jr., Park.

History of Baxter Creek Gateway Park
By now, most of you have probably noticed the big changes at the Baxter Creek Gateway site in northern El Cerrito. With funding from the State Water Resources Control Board, Coastal Conservancy, and City of El Cerrito, this formerly neglected property has been recontoured and transformed into a community park with a lovely, meandering creek, a paved extension of the Ohlone Greenway trail, and two community gathering areas.

The City of El Cerrito hired Hanford Applied Restoration Conservation contractors in 2005 to restore the creek and construct a new civic gathering area facing San Pablo Ave. To protect animals, amphibians, and insects living in and near the creek, workers moved them to a new location during construction. The creek was diverted to a pipe, and the de-watered creek channel was graded. Trucks moved soil off site, and bulldozers reshaped the creek channel.

Park construction was completed in Spring 2006, with final installation of signage and the official ribbon-cutting ceremony in September 2006. Check out our Gateway Park "before" page, our Gateway Park 2005 page, and our Gateway Park 2006 page for a series of photographs of the restoration project. For detailed information about the effort to save Baxter Creek at this site as well as the Gateway Design process, see our Restorations page.

Petroglyph Boulders
Baxter Creek watershed features two stunning petroglyph boulders: one in El Cerrito's Canyon Trail Park (pictured below) and the other in Richmond's Mira Vista Park. The Bay Area Rock Art Research Association considers the rock in El Cerrito to be "one of the premier petroglyph boulders in the Bay Area."

For years, these boulders were referred to on this Website as "Indian grinding stones," but BARARA's Leigh Marymor recently contacted us to explain that the rocks clearly "functioned as much more than that." According to Marymor, the boulder in Canyon Trail Park "shares many features in common with other Central Coast Range rock art sites, which leads researchers to believe that the site functioned ceremonially, serving ritual functions.

"We think this site is very old," Marymor continues. "Cupules and other features on the stone lead us to believe that this site may have been in use for 5,000 to 8,000 years, predating Penutian/Ohlone occupation of the Bay, with probable continual use through Ohlone occupation.

BARARA members have "watched over the Canyon Trail petroglyph for many years," Marymor reports, "often with trepidation as the site has on occasion been tagged with painted graffiti and recently defaced with scratched images. The soft schist surface of the boulder is also threatened by the continual abrasion of sand, which is ground into the boulder by young and eager climbing feet."

FOBC will be working with BARARA to develop a proposal for protecting this important cultural resource. As Marymor says, "Our commitment is not only to the images on the rock, but to the rock's setting in the landscape and to its watershed."

Landscape architect Reed Dillingham of Dillingham Associates has completed the first draft landscape plan for a Cultural Landscape Garden at the petroglyph site. Reports Marymor: "Now that the City of El Cerrito has completed removing the children's playground equipment near the boulder, the wonderful potential of the site can more easily be envisioned."

To learn more about BARARA's work to protect rock art around the Bay Area, see Looking Back at Four Years of Advocacy. See also Group seeking clues to carvings and Clues to area's past set in stone (news stories from The Journal; 2003-2004).

To join FOBC's effort to protect the Baxter Creek petroglyphs, send us an e-mail message.

Native Americans
Native American Ohlone of the Huchiun clan were probably the first to use the streams in the El Cerrito/Richmond area as a source of drinking water. Settling in the Bay Area almost 2,500 years ago, the Ohlone were hunters and gatherers who used the water from local creeks to leach tannins from acorns, which they ground into gruel on the massive rocks surrounding the creek (pictured below).

These early native Californians probably had a negligible impact on these creeks because (1) they relied primarily on the San Francisco Bay estuary for food and (2) the dams they created to catch fish were only temporary constructions.

Rancho San Pablo
European settlers in the 17th century probably made the first major impact on Baxter Creek and other East Bay streams. After winning independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico granted huge tracts of California land to military heroes like Don Francisco Castro, who took possession of the 17,000-acre land grant called Rancho San Pablo through which Baxter Creek runs.

Ranging from El Cerrito north to Pinole and east to El Sobrante and Lafayette, Rancho San Pablo was primarily used for grazing cattle, which were undoubtedly watered in local creeks. Much of Castro's land became tied up in litigation brought by new settlers to the area. At his death in 1831, his heirs retained only about 200 acres of the original Rancho. The rest was awarded to other European settlers.

Richard Stege's Frog Farm
In 1876, German goldminer and entrepreneur Richard Stege bought 600 acres of former grazing land in Rancho San Pablo for his new bride, local widow Mrs. C.C. Quilfelt, and her young daughter. Built by William T. Coleman in the 1850s, their mansion stood between Potrero and Cypress Sts. in Richmond, near today's Booker T. Anderson, Jr., Park and the public school named after Stege.

In a Nov. 30, 1984, article in the Oakland Tribune, Brenda Lane described how Stege made his fortune: "One spring day, while taking a walk on his ranch, he spotted some boys catching frogs at a pond. They told him restaurants were willing to pay $2 apiece for their day's catch. It must have been then that Stege grabbed one of those purple-backed, yellow-throated beasts, gazed into its little eyes and saw his future" operating California's largest and most successful frog farm.

"Right from the beginning, his business took off. Frogs are pretty self-sufficient. They reproduce like crazy and feed on algae, insects -- even baby frogs." Stege dammed Baxter Creek to create four ponds, "started separating tadpoles from the parents, and he was in business. . . .

"But by 1898, it was all coming to an end. By this time, Stege had a lot of competition from younger frog farmers, and his business was suffering from the bad advice of an associate." He died that same year at age 67, eulogized by a local reporter as a "great contributor" to Richmond history.

After Stege's death, the Eastshore and Suburban Railway used part of his property for its railroad operations, and the City of Richmond later turned this land into Booker T. Anderson, Jr., Park.

20th Century Development
Located on the western shore of Contra Costa County approximately 16 miles northeast of San Francisco and 12 miles north of Oakland, the cities of Richmond and El Cerrito form part of a highly urbanized area along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. Richmond and El Cerrito were incorporated as cities in 1905 and 1917, respectively, and cover a total of almost 60 square miles, with populations currently estimated at 93,000 and 23,500.

Both cities are situated in a region crossed by numerous creeks that flow down from the East Bay hills to San Francisco Bay. To accommodate rapid growth over the past 60 years, these cities followed now-outmoded engineering assumptions by channelizing their creeks into concrete culverts. Although this approach resulted in the construction of uniform patterns of residential and commercial buildings, it buried underground some of the cities' most precious natural resources, which provided riparian habitat for wildlife as well as areas of solace for urban residents.

Houses go up in northeast Richmond circa 1930
(photo courtesy of City of Richmond)

During the last 25 years, research into watershed hydrology and fluvial geomorphology has yielded new alternatives to culverting that are proving to be cost-effective ways for cities to accommodate growth without destroying their creeks. These alternatives are also creating opportunities for citizens to revitalize their neighborhoods by helping to save and restore the few open creeks that still exist and to daylight others.

In place of the riprap and concrete commonly used to "improve" creek banks, both live and dead plants are now utilized to stabilize and vegetate eroding banks. Using soil bioengineering techniques, trees and shrubs are planted to provide shade, habitat, and forage for wildlife, prevent erosion, and filter pollution that would otherwise flow into the Bay.

For restored stretches of Baxter Creek, visit El Cerrito's Poinsett Park and Richmond's Booker T. Anderson, Jr., Park.

Baxter Creek Mapping Project
Artist Christopher Castle works with local communities to create maps that are not topographical, but express residents' personal experience of their neighborhood's culture and natural history.

Castle initiated the community mapping concept in Marin County, where he coordinated the Marinography Mapping Project. His new project will be based specifically on Baxter Creek.

The first phase of the project will involve local schools, so Castle met with Richmond High School teachers in January to begin the planning process. Hearty thank you's go to the East Bay Community Foundation for its support!

For information on how you can become involved in this project, call Castle at (510) 233-5550 or send him an e-mail message.

Share Your Stories and Photos
If you have stories and photos to share about Baxter Creek's history, send us an e-mail message with your name, address, and telephone number.

For Further Research
Much of the information on this page is based on Malcolm Margolin's The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area (Heyday Books 1981); Mildred Hoover et al.'s Historical Spots in California (Stanford University Press, 4th ed 1990); George Emanuels' California's Contra Costa County; An Illustrated History (Diablo Books 1986); and Investigation of Cultural Resources Within the Richmond Harbor Redevelopment Project 11-A, a 1981 report to the City of Richmond by California Archaelogical Consultants, Inc.

For further research into the history of Baxter Creek and the El Cerrito/Richmond area, consult the following additional references:

• Cole, Susan. Richmond: Windows to the Past (Wildcat Canyon Books 1980).
• Lane, Brenda. Richmond Pioneer Ran "Ribbeting" Empire (Oakland Tribune, Nov. 30, 1984).
• Rego, Nilda. Stege, an industrial center, is engulfed by Richmond (West County Times, Apr. 3, 1994).
• Richard, Christopher. Guide to East Bay Creeks (Oakland Museum 1993).
• The Richmond Independent, Women's Edition (July 1910).