San Vicente Creek is a 9.3 miles (15 km) northern California

Northern California

Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...

 coastal stream which flows entirely within Santa Cruz County

Santa Cruz County, California

Santa Cruz County is a county located on the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California, on the California Central Coast. The county forms the northern coast of the Monterey Bay. . As of the 2010 U.S. Census, its population was 262,382. The county seat is Santa Cruz...

 and discharges to the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

. Its waters rise on the west facing slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains

Santa Cruz Mountains

The Santa Cruz Mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are a mountain range in central California, United States. They form a ridge along the San Francisco Peninsula, south of San Francisco, separating the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco Bay and the Santa Clara Valley, and continuing south,...

, and its mouth is at the unincorporated community of Davenport

Davenport, California

Davenport is a census-designated place in Santa Cruz County, California. Davenport sits at an elevation of . The 2010 United States census reported Davenport's population was 408.-Situation:...

 (which had originally been named after the creek).

History

Originally, there was a tidal marsh

Marsh

In geography, a marsh, or morass, is a type of wetland that is subject to frequent or continuous flood. Typically the water is shallow and features grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, other herbaceous plants, and moss....

 at the mouth of San Vicente Creek, but this was filled in by a trestle and rampart built by a collaboration between the Ocean Shore Railway and the Southern Pacific Transportation Company in 1906. The creek was redirected through a tunnel blasted into the rock adjacent to its former course .Prior to this San Vicente had been the premiere trout fishing stream in the county, so the fill caused some outrage in the local papers. An editorial in the Santa Cruz Surf at the time said: "The San Vicente Creek, beloved of the angler and the artist, has its mouth stopped by a vast dyke, and its throat choked into a tunnel, a saloon on its border, and its bed for miles denuded of the granite cobbles and sand beds. A sawmill is swiftly cutting out the timber and dirt and debris defile the pools and clog the riffles where lurked the gamey trout."

37.0093943°N 122.1941357°W