Creeks I Have Known

Rivers and streams influence where people build homesteads and cities. They encourage or constrain movement – of individuals, of families, of whole peoples. They provide a convenient means of travel. They allow irrigation of crops and provide drinking water for people and animals, both wild and domestic. They stimulate the imagination, inspire songs and stories, and sometimes bring devastating floods.

I have always considered it fortunate that I grew up on a little plot of land with a small seasonal creek running through it. We were also blessed with a larger creek less than a half mile from where we lived. Finally, another mile or so away was the west fork of the Chowchilla River – not a huge stream, but a significant year-around waterway that eventually runs into the San Joaquin River in the valley

The creek on our property had no name, and I had not yet developed the idea that I should give names to things that did not have one, so we just called it “the creek.” The large creek east of us was Pegleg Creek, and the same name was applied to the dirt road that went back one mile from the main road, then called Bootjack Road , and now part of Highway 49.

Our property was a roughly triangular piece about a hundred yards from Bootjack Road, with the base of the triangle near the road. At the east end of the strip of land between the road and our property was the “old” Bootjack Hall. People going there would enter via Pegleg Road and immediately turn left and drive over a rutted dirt route that was never graded or improved. Parking was “wherever you can find a spot.”

Pegleg Road went back one mile, roughly parallel to the creek of the same name, and ended at the home of Neil “Doc” and Helen Northy, the only other house on the road in those days. There was a barbed wire fence at our property line, with a cattle guard for easy access.

Our house sat at the extreme south end of our property, with a garage/shop north of it a little higher up. Behind the garage, the land sloped down gently then a little more sharply to the creek. It was another fairly steep 50 feet or so up to the fence between our property and the road to the hall. Our barn stood at the extreme northwest corner of our property. My description of the physical layout of this little piece of land does not really capture the full range of ups and downs contained in this small area. There was no spot that could be called flat on the property, although the last 50 feet or so of the creek was fairly level before it ran under the fence on the east side.

Our little creek crossed Pegleg Road a short distance from the cattle guard, and ran all the way across the north end of our land between the barn and garage. I’m not sure where the creek started, but it had to be fairly close, because it did not exist beyond the back of the property to our west. When it crossed into our property, it was sort of level for 30 or 40 feet, then dropped down a rocky area to the lowest spot on our land. After going through the fence on the east side of our property, it ran into Pegleg Creek a hundred feet or so farther. It dried up completely in the summer. One time I built a small diversion dam on the creek just before it dropped down through the rocky area, and temporarily changed the course of the creek for about 50 feet.

My sister Linda, neighbor Bob Butler, and I took advantage of having two “personal” creeks, swimming in Pegleg, and building dams on our creek. Our first dam (probably just mine) was a few feet upstream from where the creek crossed Pegleg Road (in other words, not on our property). It made a fairly small lake, maybe about four feet in diameter. I put an old piece of pipe through the dam near the top, and sometimes placed a 4 inch diameter glass lid into the pipe. Water pressure held it in, allowing the lake to rise to the top of the dam.

Our second dam was much more dramatic. It was built on the creek where it leveled off at the lowest part of our property, with a dam probably six feet across or a bit more. The level terrain in that spot allowed the lake to back up to around 20 feet or more in length. We placed some old boards between the bank and dam and mounted an old hand pump we had found somewhere. We could stand precariously on the boards and pump water out of the lake. Of course, we had no use for it elsewhere, so we were just pumping it back into the lake.

High water took out the smaller dam a time or two and we eventually abandoned it. The larger project withstood most of our wet weather, although I don’t remember what we did for a spillway. We probably just made a channel at the side of the dam. You had to construct these carefully so that the normal flow of the creek didn’t wash away the bank of the spillway or the dam itself. The large dam was in existence a year or two, and I don’t think we ever did anything to “decommission” it other than getting busy with jobs and going away to college.

Our dog Becky also took advantage of the creek, attempting to catch bubbles as they floated by. If there were no bubbles, she would stir up the water with her paws and create some.

Pegleg Creek ran most of the year and when it did dry up, it had a few pools that could last all summer. It also had a number of pools large enough for what passed as swimming – paddling around, pushing off the edge and floating a few feet, wading waist deep. With few exceptions these pools were small and not very deep. One exception was a basin that had developed behind the lip of the falls (about which more later). Although deep, it was only about eight feet across.

A ways downstream was a long stretch of smooth water, maybe four feet deep and 60 feet by 30, which was the largest such pool. On one exploration trip upstream from the main road, Bob and I discovered a pool, larger and deeper than most, and suitable for actual swimming, but it was not conveniently located for our usual activities.

East of our property was a 35-acre plot that had been part of the McNally homestead, a family that went back to Gold Rush days. From about 1948 and as long as I lived there, this land was owned by Chuck and Barbara Butler. The house, a big, rambling structure very close to the road, had been a stage stop back in the day. Pegleg Creek ran through this property about 100 yards west of the house. It went through a moderately rocky place, then came out into an open area with large pools, big rocks, and many turtles. A little farther there was a low dirt cliff on the east side of the creek.

It then entered a steeper, rocky area and finally went over a small waterfall that had an almost fully vertical drop of about ten feet. We called this “the falls,” and later Pegleg Falls, and I don’t know if anyone had ever given it any formal name.

Even if the creek’s flow stopped, large pools had water during dry periods. In winter, these pools would sometimes freeze over. The ice could be up to two inches thick, and we occasionally very carefully walked out on it a short distance.

I fished for and caught bluegill in Pegleg Creek, but this was never my favorite activity.

I cannot remember a time when I was not aware of the existence of the falls, and I made many trips there, from my house and Butler ’s place, solo and with Linda and/or Bob. However, my earliest memory of the creek was a gentle section a few hundred yards below the falls where our family would go for picnics. This involved walking up the short, steep hill on Pegleg Road just past our house, and following a path east of the road about 100 yards. At this point, which was the southwest corner of Butler’s property, the path turned east and went up and down through a couple of drainages, and led down to a place along the creek that was level and open enough to lay out a blanket for picnics. My memory is that these outings were fairly regular, but ended by the time I started elementary school or soon after.

Whether we made our way up to the falls from our picnics is lost in the fog of time, but I certainly knew about the falls at a fairly young age, and in those “free range” days I was surely able to go there by myself by age 10.

Once Pegleg Creek ran under the bridge on the main road, it went about a mile and flowed into the West Fork of the Chowchilla River . It roughly paralleled Pegleg Road, but was visible from the road only for a few hundred yards about three fourths of a mile back from Bootjack Road. Where it could be seen, it was at least 300 yards east of the road horizontally and a hundred feet or so lower in elevation.

We kids were very familiar with the section from the main road to the falls, but knew little about what lay beyond that. One day, probably when we were around 13 and 14, Bob Butler and I followed the creek all the way to its junction with the river. For the most part it was unspectacular, but we did discover the long, still pool mentioned above. Just before it ran into the Chowchilla, it went over a large, rounded rock outcropping, forming sort of a sliding falls.

This has gone on too long, so I will keep my remarks about the Chowchilla River brief – appropriate since it was farther from our house and I had less contact with it. There are three forks to this river, all of which cross State Highway 49 in Mariposa County. The East Fork is crossed by an old bridge, close to the water level. This bridge is still accessible because there are a number of houses in the area, but the highway now runs on a high bridge supported by two tall pillars. The bridge won an award for design when it was built in the 1960s. The Middle Fork is unimpressive and easily missed. I’m not sure it even has a sign.

The West Fork starts somewhere north of Darrah, flowing below the east end of Mt. Buckingham, and crossing Triangle Road. In this upper section it has always been called Snow Creek, but somewhere between there and Bootjack it becomes the Chowchilla. It crosses Darrah Road and Highway 49, always going mainly south. (Darrah Road runs from Bootjack to Triangle and beyond.)

Just above the Darrah Road crossing, less than a mile from “downtown” Bootjack, it flows through property that was owned by the Ballard family in the 1940s and 1950s. Their son Jim was a good friend of mine, and we sometimes went swimming in the river, in a section where there was a good size deep pool.

There are roads I’m not familiar with that cross or parallel the river, but a few miles above Raymond in Madera County, it crosses the Raymond-to-Mariposa road and runs into Eastman Reservoir. Farther on it crosses Santa Fe Avenue, Highway 99, and eventually Highway 152 just before joining the San Joaquin River.

  --Dick Estel, Jan 4 – Jan 11, 2026