- View larger map
- What Lives on Albany Hill and Cerrito Creek? Contribute to citizen science by sharing your photos and observations!
- Historic maps of Cerrito Creek
- History of Cerrito Creek and Albany Hill
- List of native plants along Cerrito Creek, Talbot to Kains
- Wikipedia article on Cerrito Creek
- Scroll down for two slide shows, two minutes each
Lower Cerrito Creek
ICerrito Creek is best thought of as a fan of small creeks catching springs and runoff on the west slopes of the hills, and coming together in a large marsh west of today’s San Pablo Avenue. Important to indigenous groups for thousands of years, Cerrito Creek became the boundary between huge Spanish and Mexican land grants. As a result it is today’s border between Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, Berkeley and Kensington, Berkeley and Albany, and Albany and El Cerrito and Richmond. It is best thought of as a fan of small creeks coming together in a large marsh west of today’s San Pablo Avenue.
Friends of Five Creeks has worked along Cerrito Creek west of the Ohlone Greenway since the group’s founding in 1996. Several overlapping efforts make this our largest single project — successful but still working toward the same goals:
- A well-maintained, unpolluted creek in a natural corridor that welcomes people and wildlife. We have come a long way!
- Revitalizing the regionally important natural area of creek and adjacent Albany Hill. This has been strikingly successfull.
- Long-term, freeing the remaining segments of the creek below San Pablo from burial in pipes. El Cerrito’s General Plan and zoning call for this.
- A creekside pedestrian-bicycle greenway from the Ohlone Greenway (BART right of way) to the Bay Trail. At our urging, the cities of Albany and El Cerrito adopted a plan that is becoming reality, segment by segment.
- Measures to deal with how sea-level rise and increased storms will affect the creek and neighboring areas, particularly the low-lying filled tidal marsh north of Albany Hill, a FEMA flood-hazard zone. Information and ideas here.
Major projects along lower Cerrito Creek
Volunteers rarely work alone. Besides many thousands of volunteer hours, our work along Cerrito has involved partnership and pressure on four cities and the East Bay Municipal Utility District, state and small federal grants, and important contributions from Friends of Albany Hill, Tending the Ancient Shoreline Hill, and El Cerrito Trail Trekkers.
Ohlone Greenway to San Pablo: In 2000, we removed blackberries and ivy that were choking the short stretch of aboveground creek just west of the Ohlone Greenway on the Albany border, planted natives, and installed seating rocks. Little trace of this work remains: in 2017-18, as part of building apartments in the southeast corner of the El Cerrito Plaza parking lot, “daylighting” was extended west to Evelyn Avenue, with native plantings and a new adjacent trail. The apartment project maintains the reach. Dense willows shaded out most of the varied natives, but but some diversity may be returned as they mature.
West of a medical-office building and its parking lot, the creek re-emerges at Talbot Avenue. Most was straightened, degraded ditch edged by the El Cerrito Plaza parking lot. Friends of Five Creeks joined El Cerrito in advocating for a modest restoration as part of reviving El Cerrito Plaza. In 2003-4 , a state grant paid to move the parking lot a short distance back from the creek; excavate a new, slightly curving channel with adjacent trail, and plant natives. Friends of Five Creeks contributed signs and seating, finished the trails and steps, and did fill-in planting and maintenance until the City of El Cerrito gradually took over, in 2017-18. Trees are mature and banks stable. Dense sedges and a variety of native flowering shrubs, vines, and wildflowers flourish. Little maintenance is needed; our volunteers work here only occasionally. Creek and trail re a model of a small, stable urban oasis.
West of San Pablo Avenue downstream to Pierce Street and the freeway — the former Bay shoreline — the creek had meandered in a large marsh edged by Native American settlements. Filling this marsh forced almost a half mile of creek into a narrow, straight channel against Albany Hill, at the same time that cities paved and roofed the land upstream, increasing storm runoff. Invasives, mainly evergreen thornless blackberries planted to control erosion, now choked the creek, trapped silt, and were increasing floods in the low-lying former marsh, now a FEMA flood zone. The neglected Albany side felt unsafe. In 2001, Friends of Five Creeks volunteers took on “restoration” required as part of building Pacific East Mall in Richmond. With the mall paying for materials, and Conservation Corps help, we began the massive task of replacing these invasives and built the trail edging the mall parking lot.
At the same time, the pioneeering restoration partnership Shelterbelt Builders was planting native trees and shrubs on the south, Albany bankm as mitigation for rebuilding the leaky Berkeley-Albany sewer main that had polluted the creek. These and other environmental efforts followed pressure by the Urban Creeks Council and Friends of Albany Hill. When the mitigation money ran out, however, Albany more or less abandoned the area. Friends of Five Creeks crossed the creek and bit by bit worked our way upstream.
Thousands of volunteers and hundreds of work parties did the hard work of digging out stubborn invaders, replacing them with varied natives, over 17 years. We also removed blackberries and cape ivy choking the historic willow grove near Middle Creek (the farthest west tributary in the Cerrito Creek’s fan), pulled tall weeds that had taken over the grassy meadows at the base of Albany Hill, and with Eagle Scout projects fixed eroded trails on Albany Hill, built steps to the creek, and rebuilt safety fences in El Cerrito’s flood-control ponds — a raging torrent in big storms. We donated signs, a table, and benches. and worked with the City of El Cerrito to create a safe, popular creekside trail. El Cerrito Trail Trekkers contributed regular valuable cleanups.
With maintenance much easier, the cities of Albany and El Cerrito now take most of the responsibility. Friends of Five Creeks continued to lead walks, install temporary signs and displays, and do citizen science through the pandemic, particularly working with high-school volunteers. Now we have largely stepped back. The cities are continuing maintenance, and Albany and Tending the Ancient Shoreline Hill have extended restoration far up Albany Hill, combining it with reducing wildfire danger.
This is success for now. But high tides still reach the ford at Santa Clara Avenue. Rising sea levels and fiercer storms as climate warms mean that erosion and flooding could affect both Albany and El Cerrito. No project is ever finished.