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The Sisquoc River is a westward flowing river in northeastern Santa Barbara County, California. It is a tributary of the Santa Maria River, which is formed when the Sisquoc River meets the Cuyama River at the Santa Barbara County and San Luis Obispo County border just north of Garey. The river is longU.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map, accessed March 15, 2011 and originates on the north slopes of Big Pine Mountain, at approximately .Calculated using Google Earth and source coordinates from Big Pine Mountain is part of the San Rafael Mountains, which are part of the Transverse Ranges.
The watershed has a Mediterranean climate and chaparral vegetation. Annual precipitation in the watershed varies from 13 to 38 inches, 95% of which falls between November and April. This means that the river is dry part of the year, as there are no reservoirs to store water. The lack of rain also causes the vegetation to get very dry and the fire hazard can be very high during the summer.
Removal of dams on Sisquoc River tributaries expands the potential for restoration of steelhead. One tributary, Horse Creek (Horse Canyon), was dammed in 1968 and the 4.5 foot high, 60 foot wide dam eventually created a scour pool, increasing the drop to over 8 feet and creating an impassable barrier to spawning steelhead. The dam had completely silted in and no longer served to restrain sediment flows so was dynamited in 2006, and its sediment naturally eroded by 2011. A beaver dam created a large pool at the confluence of Horse Creek and the Sisquoc River and abundant steelhead trout were noted in a snorkel survey by fish biologist Matt Stoecker, including three fish 9 to 14 inches in size.
The discovery of a male adult California Golden beaver ( Castor canadensis subauratus) specimen collected as "wild caught" in 1906 "along the Sespe River in Ventura County" is physical evidence that Golden beaver were historically extant in coastal streams in southern California. The Sisquoc River used to receive steelhead running up from the Pacific Ocean via the Santa Maria River, but water removed by Twitchell Reservoir has interrupted the connection.
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