We tried to put the creek into our mural. Mona sketched it on paper. Seth painted it on the wall—three times before getting it the way he liked it, with the street names of the Wiggle bike route shimmering in the water. 
We carefully mocked reality with brown (Franciscan chert) rocks on the one side of the creek and green (serpentine) on the other side. We even allowed ourselves interpretive license when we colored it in crayon blues.
When we designed the mural (1996 & ’97) I was the information source on this old creek. But I got the main thing wrong: A creek didn’t flow in the places where the Wiggle goes.
I hereby recant (as I’m fond of doing) in great detail (as I’m also fond of doing).
I thought that the Wiggle follows an old creek bed. Half right! Only the part from Duboce to Market Street actually does. Sort of. The other part, north and west of Duboce Park, was so sandy that nothing flowed on the surface except during storms. Sand soaks up a lot of water.
Luckily for my half that was right, an actual creek did emerge at the base of the southernmost dune, right at Duboce Avenue (about where Sanchez is).
Here’s a rundown of what I now know about that creek.
Location
It flowed from a spring that emitted water absorbed by the dunefield. From there it flowed strongly across what is now Market Street at about Church Street. It went down 15th Street at the base of a cliff (since removed) near Dolores Street. Then it went over to 14th and entered a freshwater marsh, which in turn flowed into the tidal waterway called Mission Creek at 14th and Folsom, about where Rainbow Grocery is today.
The Creek’s Past
Before I address the tricky matter of its name, here’s the creek’s prehistory: Going back 10,000 years, it was the ice age and the dunefield hadn’t formed, yet. The bedrock valley that’s now buried in sand was an actual creekbed flowing all the way from Golden Gate Park down to the Mission District and into a river valley which existed where the Bay is. Starting about 5,000 years ago, a “village” called Chutchui was along the creek near Market. It was actually more of a campsite used during summers by Yelamu Ohlone indians.
The creek’s brief history: The strength of the spring was Captain Anza’s cue to locate the Mission just south of the dunes. They needed enough water to irrigate crops and orchards. The creek was channeled almost immediately. According to research by Christopher Richard, an irrigation ditch was dug to divert the creek southward from the source.
The couple hundred residents of Chutchui were conscripted as the first labor for the Franciscan padres who founded Mission Dolores. Indians were called “diggers” but probably not for their new pastime as ditchdiggers. More likely, it’s because they made baskets from rhizomes dug out of the creek banks.
The Creek Today
The January 1941 flood on Market Street. This was 31 years before the Muni Metro and 60 or so years before the vent was installed that acts as a drain into the station today.
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