THE 
IOURNAL OF CEOLOGY 
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1907 
A DRAINAGE PECULIARITY OF THE SANTA CLARA 
VALLEY AFFECTING FRESH-WATER FAUNAS 
J. C. BRANNER 
In 1890 Professor Joseph Le Conte read before the Geological 
Society of America an article on Tertiary and post-Tertiary changes 
of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, in which he expressed the opinion 
that the drainage of the great valley of California formerly flowed into 
the Pacific Ocean, not through the Golden Gate as it does now, but 
by way of the Santa Clara Valley and the Bay of Monterey.‘ His 
reasons for this theory are: (1) that there is no submerged channel 
off the Golden Gate; (2) that there is a submerged valley off the Bay 
of Monterey, while (3) the watershed between the north end of the 
Santa Clara Valley and that now flowing into Monterey Bay by way 
of the Pajaro River is less than a hundred feet high at its lowest 
point. A few years later Dr. C. H. Gilbert, professor of zodlogy at 
Stanford University, in studying the fishes of California, observed a 
remarkable resemblance between certain fishes found in the Sacra- 
mento drainage and in the streams flowing into the Bay of San Fran- 
cisco, and those found in the Pajaro, Salinas, San Lorenzo, and 
other streams flowing into the Bay of Monterey. ‘The fishes here 
referred to are not of kinds that descend into salt water; their present 
distribution therefore cannot be explained by that kind of migration. 
It can only be accounted for by some ancient direct connection between 
the streams in question. ‘This work has been greatly extended by 
t Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. II (1891), p. 326. 
Vol. XV, No. 1 I 
