Taylor Creek is a 2.2 mile stream originating from Fallen Leaf Lake and flowing into Lake Tahoe. It was formed by glacial activity millions of years ago and has evolved over time. The creek flows through diverse geology of granite and sedimentary rocks and supports a variety of flora like Jeffrey pine trees and fauna such as beaver, salmon, and crayfish. Taylor Creek forms a crucial wetland habitat and ecosystem, with connections to the surrounding forest, meadows, and Lake Tahoe.

1. Taylor Creek
By Ruben Z Raya
Professor Lawler
GEOLOGY 103

2. Content• Notes
• Historical Background
• Geological Background
• Taylor Creek Geology and Evolution
• Taylor Creek Flora
• Taylor Creek Fauna
• Conclusion
• Works Cited
Taylor Creek

3. Notes
• This study was done during
June 2013.
• Unless it is indicated, all
pictures shown here belong to
the author.
• The maps were obtained from
Google Maps.
• Special thanks to the people of
the Forest Service and the
authorities of Lake Tahoe that
keep this area well preserved
for future generations to enjoy.
Taylor Creek 2013
Taylor Creek Bridge
Swamp area

4. Historical Background
The Washoe people lived there for
over 10,000 years and prior to
them the Clovis people were
there . They did hunting and
fishing in the area for many
years. (Lanman, 2012).
• Taylor Creek is probably named
for Elijah W. Taylor, who
homesteaded 160 acres near
the creek in 1864 (Lekisch, 1988).
Marsh and meadow

5. Taylor Creek Geology
• A Creek is stream, brook, or
minor tributary of a river
(Langbein, 1995).
• Taylor Creek is a 2.2 mile long
flowing stream originating in
the Fallen Leaf Lake and
culminating at Baldwin Beach
at Lake Tahoe in El Dorado
County, California (Lekisch
1988).
• Taylor Creek is the only outflow
for Fallen Leaf Lake, and begins
at a spillway on the Fallen Leaf
Lake dam on the north side of
the lake. From here it winds its
way northwards, entering the
Tallac & Taylor Creek wetland
before entering Lake Tahoe
( Lekisch, 1988).
Elevation 6,237 ft (1,901 m)
GPS: 38º55'56.95"N, 120º3'27.61"W
Obtained from Google Maps.
Taylor Creek in El Dorado County

6. Evolution of the Creek
• Taylor Creek Run-off
Taylor Creek begun by the movement
of glaciers 25 million years ago
during the Cenozoic Era, while the
uplifting formed the Sierra Nevada.
Glaciers scraped off surface layers
of soil and rock as they grew and
advanced across the area, and
when they retreated, they left
behind low-lying areas where these
materials have been removed.
Water drains, or 'runs off', to this
area under the force of gravity and
pools put pressure to the longer
stretches of low land, water flows
along, again under the force of
gravity, until it was able to escape
to Lake Tahoe. Thus, Taylor creek
was the result of time and pressure
(Hamilton, 1997).

7. Taylor Creek Geology
• Glaciations gave shape to Taylor Creek, but prior to the glaciations data indicates that the
Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe was ~2800 m high at the time, consistent with early (Late
Cretaceous–early Cenozoic) uplift. The tuffs erupted from calderas in central Nevada and
flowed down an extensive paleoriver system that drained to the Pacific Ocean, which was in
the Great Valley at the time, but 450 million years ago during the Ordovician, a major
mountain-building episode was the Taconic orogeny that was well under way in Cambrian
times. In the beginning of the Late Ordovician, from 460 to 450 Ma, volcanoes along the
margin of the Iapetus Ocean spewed massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere, turning the planet into a hothouse. These volcanic island arcs eventually collided
with proto North America to form the Appalachian mountains. By the end of the Late
Ordovician these volcanic emissions had stopped. Gondwana had by that time neared or
approached the pole and was largely glaciated.(Stanley, 1998)
450 million years ago

8. Granite rock
• Gray granite
• This specimen that I found was very
common along the Taylor Creek.
This gray Granite rock is a common
type of intrusive, felsic, igneous
rock which is a granular and
phaneriticin texture. This rock
consist mainly of quartz, mica, and
feldspar (Clements, 1988).
• Granite is an igneous rock and it is
form from magma. Granitoids are a
ubiquitous component of the crust.
They have crystallized from
magmas. Mt Pluto was probably the
source of magma that form this
rock (Clements, 1988).

9. Sedimentary rock
• Specimen found: A Clastic Siltstone, and it is made of
sediment that is between sand and clay and it's finer grained than
sandstone but coarser than shale.
• The field test for siltstone is that you can't see the individual
grains, but you can feel them. Many geologists rub their teeth
against the stone to detect the fine grit of silt. Siltstone is much
less common than sandstone or shale.
• Siltstone usually forms offshore, in quieter environments than the
places that make sandstone. (King, 2001)
This rock is also common along the creek,
it is a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary
rocks are types of rock that are formed
by the deposition of material at the
Earth's surface and within bodies of
water. Sedimentation is the collective
name for processes that cause
mineral and/or organic particles to
settle and accumulate or minerals to
precipitate from a solution over time.
Particles that form a sedimentary rock
by accumulating are called sediment
before being deposited, sediment was
formed by weathering and erosion in a
source area, and then transported to
the place of deposition by water, ice,
wind, movements or glaciers which
are called agents of denudation.
(Stanley, 1999)

10. Flora
• Pinus jeffreyi : Pinus evolved in middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere in the middle Mesozoic. By the late Cretaceous pines had
spread east and west throughout Laurasia, attaining high diversity in eastern Asia, the eastern United States, and western Europe, but
having little representation at high northern latitudes. Changing climates in the early Tertiary established warm and humid
tropical/subtropical conditions in a broad zone to 70°N throughout middle latitudes. Pines and their relatives disappeared from many
middle-latitude areas during this time and were replaced by diverse angiosperm taxa of the boreotropical flora, which were adapted to
the equable, tropical climate. The effect of this climate change and spread of boreotropical flora was to displace pines from their former
habitats. A hypothesis is defended that pines shifted, during the three warm periods of the Eocene, into three major refugial areas in the
Northern Hemisphere: high latitudes, low latitudes, and upland regions of middle latitudes (Miller, 1993).
• Jeffrey Pines, Pinus jeffreyi,
dominate the forest in the area, they
thrive during the dry summers,
absorb the snow moisture and
hardy stand the toughest winters.
Jeffrey pine is a large, slow-
growing, long-lived conifer. Trees
often live 400 or 500 years. In
Jeffrey pine/huckleberry oak
vegetation in central Sierra Nevada,
Jeffrey pine may reach 200 feet
diameters of up to 8.2 feet. Crowns
are rounded or long and
symmetrical. Pinus is an ancient
genus, diverging from other extant
genera at least 100 million years
ago in the Cretaceous (Alvin,1960).

11. FAUNA
• Taylor Creek forms an important
wetland complex separate from
Lake Tahoe by Baldwin Beach.
Historically, this wetland complex
provided approximately 200 acres of
wetland and meadow habitat for
many species.
• (Taylor Creek, USFS, 2003).
• There are fish, insects, birds, bears,
frogs, moles, ducks living there. I
am going to share only pictures and
information of the species that I
saw.
• Many aquatic insects are adapted to
living in creeks and have flattened
bodies so that they can move over
rocks without getting swept away.
They mainly eat algae and other
material that clings to those rocks
like this crayfish.
• (Taylor Creek, USFS, 2003).
Duck and meadow

12. Crayfish
Paranephrops Planifrons
Scientific Classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthopoda Subphylum: Crustacea Class: Malacostraca Order: Decapoda
Suborder: Pleocyemata Infraorder: Astacidea Superfamily: Astacoidea
(Huxley, 1879)
Crayfish are the freshwater cousins of the
lobsters. Fossils have shown that
crayfish were present in the Northern
Hemisphere at least 150 million years
ago. An ancestor of crayfish first
evolved very early, when all of Earth's
continents were united in a single
landmass called Pangaea.
The fossil dates are consistent with results
of recent genetic studies, which
suggest that many new crayfish
species began to appear in what is now
Australia about 134 million years
ago."These crayfish were burrowing
much like modern ones in the same
area today, showing that their
behaviors haven't changed that much
in more than 100 million years."
(Johnson, 2008).

13. Beaver
Beaver (Castor canadensis)
Beaver tree work
The Giant Beaver, Castoroides (Field Museum of Natural History)
Beavers are the second largest rodents, first
appear in the fossil record about 65 million
years ago, around the time when the non-
avian dinosaurs became extinct. The
ancestors of today's beavers and their
relatives appear in the fossil record near the
end of the Eocene. Ancient beavers include
creatures such as Castoroides.
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Rodentia
Family: Castoridae
Genus: Castor
Species: C. canadensis
Caffrey, P. and Anderson, S. H. (2001)
Caffrey, P. and Anderson, S. H. (2001)

14. Salmon
The Salmon living in this creek is the Oncorhynchus nerka, and it is not native
of Taylor Creek.
Salmon. Photo by Mark Giovanetti
Scientific Classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Subclass:Neopterygii
Infraclass: Teleostei
Order: Salmoniformes
Family: Salmonidae
Genus: Oncorhynchus
Species: O. nerka
Both the fossil record and molecular data indicate that the genera Salmo and
Onchorhynchus had diverged by the early Miocene (15–20 MA),
(Devlin, 1993)

15. Fauna Habitat
Because streams are used as
corridors by many small mammals,
birds of prey such as owls can be
found waiting for their moment to
strike. Small insect-eating birds are
numerous here.
Many birds feed on fish in creeks or
on aquatic insects as they emerge
(Devlin, 1993)
Marsh and forest meet
Stream

16. Conclusion
• A complete Ecosystem
• Taylor Creek is formed by the
forest, meadows, marsh,
stream, lagoon and sand beach.
Each piece is a community of
living things and their
surroundings, and each piece
contains many habitats of
individual plants and animals. It
takes all the pieces to ensure
that clean water is delivered to
Lake Tahoe. The Taylor Creek
watershed collects snow and
rain and drains it to the Lake.
Changing one piece means
changing the whole picture
(Taylor-Tallac restoration report, US Forest Service,
2011).

17. Works Cited
• * Harvey Blatt and Robert J. Tracy (1997). Petrology (2nd ed.). New York: Freeman. p. 66
• *James, C. D., Lanman, R. B. (Spring, 2012). "Novel physical evidence that beaver historically were native to the
Sierra Nevada". California Fish and Game 98 (2): 129–132.
• *Marcia Williamson (Oct. 1992). “Tahoe Salmon life”. Sunset Magazine. Retrieved
• *Naslas, G. D., W. W. Miller, R. R. Blank and G. F. Gifford, 1994. Sediment, nitrate, and ammonium in surface
runoff from two Tahoe basin soil types. Water Resour. Bull. 30: 409–417.
• *R. B. Lanman, H. Perryman, B. Dolman, Charles D. James (Spring, 2012). "The historical range of beaver in the
Sierra Nevada: a review of the evidence". California Fish and Game 98 (2): 65–80.
• *U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. Tahoe Map, accessed
September 30, 2012.
• *Washoe Project, University of Chicago. Retrieved 2012-09-30.