Brea Creek is one of four principal tributaries of Coyote Creek, which is a lower tributary of the San Gabriel River in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. It drains parts of Orange, Riverside, and

San Bernardino San Bernardino (; Spanish for "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a population of 222,101 in the 2020 cen ...

counties. The creek flows U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
, accessed March 16, 2011 from the cities of Brea and

Anaheim Anaheim ( ) is a city in northern Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a population of 346,824, making it the most populous city in Orange County, the 10th-most ...

to Whittier, where its mouth is on the

left bank In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography, as follows. In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terra ...

of Coyote Creek, at a point lower in elevation.

Ancient times

In ancient times, Brea Creek was utilized by the

Tongva The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historically ...

nation, which means people of the earth and later referred to by the Spanish as the ‘Gabrieliño’, that inhabited the La Habra valley for the past 10,000 years. Brea was then within the ethnographic boundaries of the Tongva; their village was called Nacaunga in the

Tongva language The Tongva language (also known as Gabrielino or Gabrieleño) is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language formerly spoken by the Tongva, a Native American people who live in and around Los Angeles, California. It has not been a language of everyday conve ...

and was strategically located at the mouth of Brea Canyon adjacent to Brea Creek.

Colonial times

In colonial times, on Saturday, July 29, 1769, the Spanish explorer Don Gaspar de Portolá i Rovira, along with Father Junipero Serra and others such as

José Antonio Yorba José Antonio Yorba (July 20, 1743 – January 16, 1825), also known as Don José Antonio Yorba I, was a Spanish soldier and early settler of Spanish Empire, Spanish California. Spanish soldier Born in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia (San Saturnino) in ...

(from whom the City of

Yorba Linda Yorba Linda is a suburban city in northeastern Orange County, California, United States, approximately Ordinal directions, southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. It is part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and had a population of 68,336 at th ...

in Orange County was eventually named), camped at Brea Canyon north of Fullerton within the La Habra Valley region near a stream rea Creekand near a canyon rea Canyoncalled in the Spanish tongue ‘La Cañada de la Brea’, having crossed the Santa Ana River along El Camino Real, through modern-day Anaheim, Fullerton, Brea, and

La Habra La Habra (archaic spelling of ''La Abra'', ) is a city in the northwestern corner of Orange County, California, United States. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 60,239. A related city, La Habra Heights, is located to the north o ...

on their famed

march March is the third month of the year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is the second of seven months to have a length of 31 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, the meteorological beginning of spring occurs on the first day of March ...

from

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

Monterey Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bot ...

. Moreover, most of the waterways in the Orange County area received their name from Spanish Conquistadores in the 18th century.

Course

The creek begins in the northeasternmost part of the Coyote Creek drainage basin, in a mountain canyon named Brea Canyon, at the

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...

–

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line. It flows southwest, receiving over ten small right-bank

tributaries A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drain ...

, before crossing the Orange County–Riverside County line and receiving Tonner Canyon (also Toner) on the left bank. The creek bends northwest then sharply southwest, receives a few more tributaries on either bank, and flows into the northernmost arm of the Brea Reservoir. Exiting the Brea Reservoir dam, the creek bends west-northwest in a straight and channelized course, receives several small right-bank tributaries, flows past a

retention basin A retention basin, sometimes called a wet pond, wet detention basin, or stormwater management pond (SWMP), is an artificial pond with vegetation around the perimeter and a permanent pool of water in its design. It is used to manage stormwater ...

on the left bank, and joins Coyote Creek shortly upstream of Fullerton Creek, the next major tributary.

Streamflow

From 1932 to 1969, the

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

operated two streamflow gauges on Brea Creek, one at the mouth and one at Brea Reservoir. The highest flow recorded at the mouth (Fullerton) was on 14 March 1941. Four other flows during that period exceeded 1,000 second-feet, all before 1941.

River modifications

There are four drop structures on Brea Creek, all of which are built of

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low ultimate tensile strength, tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion ...

, in the lower course of the creek, which is referred to as the "Brea Canyon Channel".

References

External links

OC Watersheds: Coyote Creek WatershedOC Watersheds: Carbon Creek Watershed
{{Orange County major watersheds San Gabriel River (California) Rivers of Orange County, California Rivers of Southern California