Fanno Creek

Fanno Creek is a 15-mile (24 km) tributary of the Tualatin River in the U.S. state of Oregon. Part of the drainage basin of the Columbia River, its watershed covers about 32 square miles (83 km2) in Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties, including about 7 square miles (18 km2) within the Portland city limits.

From its headwaters in the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills) in southwest Portland, the creek flows generally west and south through the cities of Portland, Beaverton, Tigard and Durham, and unincorporated areas of Washington County. It enters the Tualatin River about 9 miles (14 km) above the Tualatin's confluence with the Willamette River at West Linn.

For thousands of years, the Atfalati (Tualatin) tribe of the Kalapuya inhabited the watershed. The first settler of European descent, Augustus Fanno, for whom the creek is named, arrived in the mid-19th century. He established an onion farm in what became Beaverton. Fanno Farmhouse, the restored family home, is a Century Farm on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of 14 urban parks in a narrow corridor along the creek.

Although heavily polluted, the creek supports aquatic life, including cutthroat trout in its upper reaches. Watershed councils such as the Friends of Fanno Creek and government agencies have worked to limit pollution and to restore native vegetation in riparian zones.

Read more about Fanno Creek:  Course, Watershed, History, Pollution, Parks

Famous quotes containing the word creek:

    It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)