(see article here: Santa Cruz Sentinel)

The dam that was demolished in Pescadero Creek.“A 77-year-old concrete dam is now gone from San Mateo County’s Pescadero Creek, opening a route for rare coho salmon to once again return to their ancestral habitat.

The dam created a popular swimming hole at Memorial Park in the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains, where kids floated on air mattresses in the chilly waters and searched for crayfish. But it prevented the fish from making their swim from the Pacific Ocean to freshwater pools to spawn. The coho was listed as endangered in 2005 and is now on the brink of extinction.

The dam was built in 1938 to provide a swimming hole near the confluence of Peterson and McCormick creeks, part of the Works Progress Administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to combat unemployment in the Great Depression…

The dam was demolished in October by a team led by the San Mateo County Resource Conservation District and San Mateo County Parks Department — and December rains have restored the creeks natural contours, opening up 62 miles of creek habitat to the fish…

This is the fifth barrier to be removed by the San Mateo County Resource Conservation District since 2007. The project received about $280,000 in funding from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, with additional funding and effort from the conservation district and the San Mateo County Parks and Recreation Foundation…”

(Originally published in the La Honda Voice, February 2016 and April 2016)