Arroyo Seco

From Freepedia

This article is about a watercourse. For the city in Argentina, see Arroyo Seco, Santa Fe.

The Arroyo Seco (meaning "dry stream" in Spanish) is a creek and drainage channel in the southern part of the U.S. state of California. It runs from the San Gabriel Mountains in the Angeles National Forest through La Cañada Flintridge, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Highland Park, and Los Angeles before draining into the Los Angeles River near Elysian Park and north of downtown.

There is one dam along the Arroyo Seco; it is the Devil's Gate Dam on the border between La Cañada Flintridge and Pasadena. During the heavy rain season of 2004-2005 that Southern California experienced, the Devil's Gate Dam did overflow once and the Hahamonga Watershed Park right upstream from it became a short-lived lake. The overflow of Devil's Gate was a controlled test of the reservoir and spillway systems of the dam.

The drainage channel was used in the 1930s for rocket and jet propulsion testing by Caltech scientists. The area near this testing eventually became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.