Los Gatos Creek, formerly known as Arroyo Pasajero or Arroyo Poso de Chane, is a creek in

Fresno County, California Fresno County (), officially the County of Fresno, is a county located in the central portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 1,008,654. The county seat is Fresno, the fifth-most popu ...

. Its source is in the north end of Garcia Canyon in the

Diablo Range The Diablo Range is a mountain range in the California Coast Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Coast Ranges in northern California, United States. It stretches from the eastern San Francisco Bay Area at its northern end to the Salinas Valley a ...

near Benito Pass. From there it runs through Los Gatos Canyon, in the eastern foothills of the Diablo Range, then passes across Pleasant Valley, north of Coalinga, where Warthan Creek joins it east of the town. Then it flows eastward to its confluence with Jacalitos Creek, before it passes to the north of the Guijarral Hills, into the

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; Spanish language in California, Spanish: ''Valle de San Joaquín'') is the southern half of California's Central Valley (California), Central Valley. Famed as a major breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley is an importa ...

, where it is joined by Zapato Chino Creek. Some 19th-century maps show Los Gatos Creek and others on the west side of the

reaching the North Fork Kings River distributary after it turned south toward

Tulare Lake Tulare Lake () or Tache Lake ( Yokuts: ''Pah-áh-su'', ''Pah-áh-sē'') is a freshwater lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. Historically, Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi R ...

. This probably reflected what happened in extremely wet years like 1852, 1861–62 and 1873–74, before the advent of agricultural diversion. Most maps showed them only extending a short way from the foothills, their normal extent in years of normal rainfall. Today Los Gatos Creek does not flow east of 1.9 miles northwest of

Huron Huron may refer to: Native American ethnography * Huron people, who have been called Wyandotte, Wyandot, Wendat and Quendat * Huron language, an Iroquoian language * Huron-Wendat Nation, or Huron-Wendat First Nation, or Nation Huronne-Wendat * N ...

except in times of flood but no farther than the

California Aqueduct The Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct is a system of canals, tunnels, and pipelines that conveys water collected from the Sierra Nevada and valleys of Northern and Central California to Southern California. Named after California Gov ...

History

Los Gatos Creek, originally Arroyo Pasajero (traveler creek) or Arroyo Poso de Chane (pool of the Chane stream), included the Poso de Chane, a pool or waterhole on the creek, northwest of the Guijarral Hills, 6 miles from Coalinga. This pool was once the site of a village of native Americans called the Chane by the Spanish. This location became a small Spanish and later a Mexican settlement, and a way station on the

El Camino Viejo El Camino Viejo a Los Ángeles (), also known as El Camino Viejo and the Old Los Angeles Trail, was the oldest north-south trail in the interior of Spanish colonial Las Californias (1769–1822) and Mexican Alta California (1822–1848), present d ...

. The Poso de Chane and the settlement was destroyed in the

Great Flood of 1862 The Great Flood of 1862 was the largest flood in the recorded history of California, Oregon, and Nevada, inundating the western United States and portions of British Columbia and Mexico. It was preceded by weeks of continuous rains and snows tha ...

. However as late as 1925 the course of Los Gatos Creek east of the Guijarral Hills was referred to as Arroyo Pasajero on a USGS Topographic map of Coalinga.{{Cite web , url=http://cricket.csuchico.edu/scripts/PortWeb.dll?query&field1=Filename&op1=starts+with&value1=CA_881.JPG&template=mapsSID&catalog=topoMaps , title=USGS Topo: Coalinga, Edition Date:1912 reprinted 1925, Scale 1: 125000; from California Historic Topographic Map Collection -Meriam Library, California State College, Chico, accessed December 5, 2011 , access-date=December 6, 2011 , archive-url=https://archive.today/20120707055902/http://cricket.csuchico.edu/scripts/PortWeb.dll?query&field1=Filename&op1=starts+with&value1=CA_881.JPG&template=mapsSID&catalog=topoMaps , archive-date=July 7, 2012 , url-status=dead Los Gatos Creek is remembered as the site of a plane crash in 1948 which was the subject of a song by

Woody Guthrie Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer, songwriter, and composer widely considered to be one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American Left, A ...

, "

Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" is a protest song with lyrics by Woody Guthrie and music by Martin Hoffman detailing the 1948 Los Gatos DC-3 crash, January 28, 1948 crash of a plane near Los Gatos Creek (Fresno County, California), Los Gatos ...

Los Gatos Creek County Park

Los Gatos Creek flows through Los Gatos Creek County Park.

References

Rivers of Fresno County, California Parks in Fresno County, California Diablo Range Geography of the San Joaquin Valley Regional parks in California El Camino Viejo Rivers of Northern California