San Francisquito Creek & Tributaries Paintings

San Francisquito Creek Railroad Crossing "Tall Stick"
In 1769 Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola hiked over a small range of coastal mountains, saw a beautiful bay, and camped under a giant redwood tree on the banks of a creek in order to explore the area further. He called the tall redwood tree El Palo Alto, which means ‘tall stick’ in Spanish. The land is now called California, the mountains are now called the Santa Cruz Range, the bay is San Francisco Bay, and the creek named San Francisquito Creek. Years later a town would spring up in the area named after the landmark tree, Palo Alto, and a famous university called Stanford started. You can read more about Palo Alto history here.

 Artist Donald Neff is the middle of a year-long project to paint the Creeks and Rivers of Silicon Valley. San Francisquito Creek and it's tributaries have been featured in 4 paintings so far.  We can hope for more. Donald posts "I will probably return here before the project is complete, and paint down San Francisquito Creek which runs easterly through Palo Alto, by Stanford University and into the San Francisco Bay."
Near San Francisquito Creek Outlet "Baylands Fun"
The Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve is the largest remaing tract of undisturbed marshland in the San Francisco Bay area. Over the years, actually since the 1850′s, much of the bay’s shoreline had been converted to salt evaporation ponds for the production of sea salt. These are really quite pretty from the air. Much of that isbeing restored now to its natural state, but some still remain.
Los Trancos Creek "Venture Capital State"

In Portola Valley close to the Stanford Linear Accelerator "Nuclear Heaven"

Comments

  1. nextmoranMarch 22, 2014 at 1:18 PM

    Thanks for spreading the word about my year long quest! I am always looking for spots to paint and include in the collection, so location ideas are welcome. You can email me directly at donald@donaldneff.com

    Donald Neff
    http://www.donaldneff.com

    ReplyDelete

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