|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
As you pass from Menlo Park to Palo Alto along El Camino Real, there is a short bridge that crosses a little creek. It’s called San Francisquito Creek. The name in Spanish means “Little San Francisco” – the “little” referring to the size of the creek (not the saint), is a creek that courses through the towns of Portola Valley and Woodside, as well as the cities of Menlo Park and Palo Alto.
The original inhabitants of the area where the Ohlone people, called by the Spaniards “Costanoans”, or Coast-dwellers. These local residents lived off the land, gathering nuts, berries, and fish from both the ocean and the bay. Because of the abundance of food, there was no need for them to practice agriculture. Evidence of their civilization is still being unearthed on the Filoli estate in Woodside and along San Francisquito Creek.
In 1769, the Spanish exploration party led by Don Gaspar de Portolà camped by the creek for five nights, November 6–11, after their momentous discovery of San Francisco Bay. The Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, a member of the expedition, noted in his diary that, “The commander decided that we should stop in this valley while the explorers went out again to acquire certain information…They were given four days to be gone”.
To be continued….
Everything else is just history
