Cache Creek

About

Cache Creek, California — 1912 Cache Creek Dam, 1935-1942 Monticello Dam, 1953 Lake Berryessa, 745,600 ac. Paddlers read Cache Creek through gauge 11451800, which posts an average of roughly 650 cubic feet per second against a historical baseline near 580. The recommended window runs 300 to 1,500 cfs, and the classic run is the 12-mile Rumsey-to-Guinda stretch — Class II–III and the best whitewater on the creek. Above it, a 30-mile seasonal upper canyon drops from Clear Lake to Rumsey; below it, an 8-mile Class I–II float from Guinda to Capay offers a mellow finish. Altogether the watershed spans roughly 745,600 acres across Yolo, Colusa, and Lake counties, draining 1,165 square miles into the broader Sacramento River system.

The land here has a habit of moving violently. When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shook a landslide loose north of Rumsey, the debris dammed the creek entirely, dropping water levels until the blockage finally broke and unleashed severe flooding downstream. Human engineering followed close behind. In 1912 the Yolo Water and Power Company broke ground on Cache Creek Dam, the outlet structure from Clear Lake, and finished it in 1914 — a concrete gravity dam whose fifteen six-by-seven-foot openings are governed by hydraulically operated slide gates.

The watershed's industrial century began earlier. From the 1830s through the 1920s, the Cache Creek country was logged to feed the regional timber industry of 1850 to 1910 and the railroad expansion of 1860 to 1910, worked by local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations. That era wound down as the old-growth stands were exhausted around 1910, state forestry conservation began in 1915, and state forests were established in the 1930s. The first hydrological studies overlapped it: USGS surveys in the 1870s through 1890s, gauging stations from the 1880s to the 1910s, and state streamflow assessments into the 1930s.

The dam-building continued well beyond Cache Creek Dam itself. The Monticello Dam era of 1935 to 1942 raised a 304-foot concrete arch dam that created the 20,700-acre Lake Berryessa by 1953, defining the modern watershed. Decades later, the 1990s Capay Valley streambank erosion study — documented in USGS Water-Resources Investigations Report 1988-4188 — examined the effect of increased streamflow releases on the channel. Since 1990, the Cache Creek Conservancy has managed the watershed, and the creek today supports the Clearlake, Guinda, and Woodland economies.

Protection is the current chapter. Cache Creek is bracketed by the Cache Creek Natural Area and the BLM Cache Creek Wilderness Study Area, and in 2019 BLM renewed protections for the canyon corridor, preserving one of the most accessible wilderness-quality landscapes in the Coast Ranges. The measure safeguards water quality and habitat for the tule elk herd that inhabits the canyon — a fitting steward for a creek that has been named, blockaded, dammed, and studied, and still runs coastal-Range whitewater through public land.