Glen Echo Creek

Glen Echo Creek

     Glen Echo Creek, the small watercourse that parallels Piedmont Avenue as it flows through the neighborhood, originates much farther away. Although the creek seems to appear out of the hillside in Mountain View Cemetery, it, along with several other small creeks, has its headwaters in the hills above the town of Piedmont.

     These creeks provided a source of shell fish and water for the Native Americans who lived in the area.  A large settlement of the Ohlone had homes in what is now the Shellmound area – only two or three miles away by foot.  They used the grasses on the hillsides and small flexible branches of willows growing along the creek to weave baskets.  With no plastic buckets,dishes, pots or pans, baskets were an essential element in these Native American’s daily lives.

     Settlers who moved into the area found it inconvenient to haul water from the creek by hand.  They built windmills to move the water for them.  Early photos of Piedmont Grocery – around 1910 - show windmills at the edge of the Piedmont Grocery property on Glen Echo Creek.  And people who grew up in the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood 60 years and more ago remember that for children the creek was a favorite place to play in summer.

      As soon as Mountain View Cemetery was established, in 1865, the creek was christened Cemetery Creek because it ran right through Mountain View.  The name was changed by Mr. Hunt, a prominent citizen, whose large, rural property holding along what is now Piedmont Avenue was called Glen Echo.  There will be more on Mr. Hunt in a future column.

     Through the years, as the true course of the creek became almost obliterated with culverts, street paving and other diversions, its origin became impossible to find except by the most diligent and persistent searcher.  It currently seems to appear out of the hillside in Mountain View.

      In Mountain View a series of dams on the creek has created three small lakes.  From these reservoirs, we can follow the creek fairly well to its mouth at Lake Merritt. By watching for the dips and low spots in the streets that stop at or
cross Piedmont Avenue, we can see its course.  In a couple of neighborhoods off Piedmont Avenue, it can still be seen uncovered.  Down Entrada and right will
give you a glimpse.  Also next to Linda Glen senior housing complex it can be seen.  It goes underground at Piedmont Gardens parking lot, but appears at the
curve in Glen, where it is fenced off.  A few hundred feet into  Panama Court it’s
possible to get to it briefly, but then it is closed off again.  However, back onto Glen you’ll find a path that parallels the creek and at this point you can access it easily.

       Glen Echo Creek, trashed by vandals and used as a dump for beer bottles and household trash, was doomed by the 1960s to be covered until neighborhood activists worked with the City to make it into the parkway it is now between Glen and  Montell. From Montell it disappears again until it emerges on the other side of
MacArthur Boulevard.  A lovely neighborhood on Richmond Boulevard has been built around the open creek.  Following Glen Echo after it disappears there
becomes very difficult and requires a map. But next to the Downtown Senior Center at Harrison and Grand, it’s quite accessible.  That’s where it flows under
Grand Avenue and enters Lake Merritt.

©Ruby Long  2013