Tijeras Canyon Creek is a watercourse in northeast

Orange County Orange County most commonly refers to: *Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area Orange County may also refer to: U.S. counties *Orange County, Florida, containing Orlando *Orange County, Indiana *Orange County, New ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

and a tributary of

Arroyo Trabuco Arroyo Trabuco (known also as Trabuco Creek) is a -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 ...

. It originates in the foothills of the

Santa Ana Mountains The Santa Ana Mountains are a short peninsular mountain range along the coast of Southern California in the United States. They extend for approximately southeast of the Los Angeles Basin largely along the border between Orange and Riverside co ...

, and flows southwest through the suburban city of

Rancho Santa Margarita :''This article refers to the San Luis Obispo County, California, land grant. For the city of Rancho Santa Margarita, see Rancho Santa Margarita, California'' Rancho Santa Margarita was a Mexican land grant in the Santa Lucia Mountains, in pre ...

for several miles as an underground

culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material. In the United Kingdom ...

. Below State Route 241 it becomes a free-flowing creek, traveling through Cañada Vista Park and Tijeras Creek Golf Club before joining with Trabuco Creek in O'Neill Regional Park. Due to its relatively natural condition, the lower Tijeras Creek provides habitat for the threatened arroyo chub, which is endemic to coastal Southern California streams. Large numbers of native fish were observed there during field studies in 2010. In March 2010 a force main adjacent to Tijeras Creek ruptured, spilling more than of raw sewage into the creek. The contaminated water traveled into Trabuco and

San Juan Creek San Juan Creek, also called the San Juan River, is a long stream in Orange and Riverside Counties, draining a watershed of .7.5 Minute Quadrangle Map, U.S. Geological Survey, San Juan Capistrano, 1968, photorevised 1981 Its mainstem begins in ...

s before reaching the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, forcing a six-day closure at

Doheny State Beach Doheny State Beach is a protected beach in the state park system of California, United States, located on the Pacific Ocean in the city of Dana Point. The beach is a popular surf spot located at the mouth of San Juan Creek, which flows from th ...

References

Rivers of Orange County, California {{California-river-stub

See also

References