In 1772, the first recorded Spanish expedition crossed Wildcat Creek, although the Spaniards may have traveled this far north as early as 1769. The 1772 Fages and 1776 de Anza expeditions received festive greetings at two villages along Wildcat Creek, one of which was estimated at 100 – 200 people in size. Within three decades, nearly all the native Huchiun had been forced to move to Mission Dolores and convert to Christianity. On an 1830 diseño of the Rancho San Pablo Wildcat Creek appears as Arroyo Seco. Later it was also known as Arroyo Chiquito. An 1861 map indicates that Wildcat Creek was called Little San Pablo Creek then. "Big" San Pablo Creek is located in the next drainage east of the drainage of Wildcat Creek. There are over fifty geographic place names in California with the word "wildcat", which either refers to the historic presence of bobcats or to its meaning as an "unsound scheme".
Watershed
The Wildcat Creek watershed drains. The creek originates on Vollmer Peak in Tilden Regional Park just east of the city of Berkeley. It feeds the artificial Lake Anza as well as the smaller reservoir Jewel Lake along its course. In its lower course, it passes through the city of San Pablo and portions of the city of Richmond. Where it exits the hills, it passes through Alvarado Park, which includes a WPA-constructed stone arch bridge over the creek. It also courses through San Pablo's civic center and Davis Park. Wildcat Creek culminates in the Wildcat Marsh and thence to San Pablo Bay.
Ecology
The Wildcat San Pablo Creeks Watershed Council won the Governors Environmental and Economic Leadership award in 2003. Founded in 1985, it is the oldest, continuing running urban watershed council in California. In 2004, the Wildcat San Pablo Watershed Council began work on the Wildcat Creek Watershed Restoration Plan, to address recurring flood damages within the City of San Pablo. In April, 2010, the plan was published and addressed three goals: In September 2010 the City of San Pablo announced that it had received a $1.8 million grant from the state Department of Water Resources to clean up Wildcat Creek. Wildcat Creek supported a steelhead run historically, but degradation of habitat and construction of passage barriers from urbanization likely resulted in their extirpation sometime after 1915. The dams that form both of these artificial lakesLake Anza and Jewel Lake are impassable barriers to spawning steelhead. In September 1983, the East Bay Regional Park District planted 615 steelhead from Redwood Creek into Wildcat Creek between Alvarado Park and the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. The EBPRD reported that no trout were present in Wildcat Creek prior to this stocking, so that the newly established population would provide a second and separate source for a "precarious" and "unique" genetic stock. This re-introduction has been successful with steelhead reproducing in the creek below Jewel Lake. According to CEMAR's San Francisco Estuary Watersheds Evaluation of 2007, only of the watershed's total of stream channel is suitable and available to steelhead. Recently the East Bay has seen a renaissance of the native coastal rainbow trout in the watershed, and some have been spotted in the creek in Downtown Richmond nesting in submerged shopping carts and other garbage. The fish have also been spotted in Tilden Regional Park in the Berkeley Hills near the park's merry-go-round and a population makes its way up the creek from Lake Anza every spring to spawn. A second native fish, the three-spined stickleback thrives in the creek and its tributaries. The recovering Wildcat Marsh supports a diversity of endangered and threatened species, including the California clapper rail, the black rail, the salt marsh harvest mouse, and the San Pablo vole.
In April 1991, a student at the University California, Berkeley electrofished the two perennial reaches of Wildcat Creek to determine the condition of O. mykiss populations. The upper reach was located above Lake Anza, while the lower reach was at the northwest edge of Wildcat Canyon Regional Park. The upper reach produced 46 O. mykiss. In the lower reach, 71 O. mykiss were caught. The resulting study reported that the presence of multiple age classes in both the upper and lower reaches indicated successful spawning in the two areas. The study also noted age 3+ O. mykiss from Lake Anza spawning in upper reaches of Wildcat Creek.
