Martinez may be the most beaver-friendly town in the United States.
It will still celebrate its former downtown residents eight years after they vacated their Alhambra Creek home with Saturday’s Beaver Festival XVI in Susana Park.
A beaver family made national news nearly two decades ago when it built a small dam and a dome-shaped lodge on the creek, near the Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder-Elections Department on Escobar Street. Though there were concerns in 2006 that the critters would make the flood-prone creek a bigger threat during the rainy season, the city came to view the beavers as a community asset.
“It was a tourist thing,” said Heidi Perryman, a former member of the city’s beaver subcommittee and founder of Worth a Dam, which hosts Saturday’s celebration. “It was a community thing. They brought awareness and made people feel connected to the creek.”
Over a decade in their downtown housing, the beavers produced 27 little beavers, also known as kits.
The last year they were there, four kits and an older yearling died. Perryman’s group had them examined by veterinarians at University of California, Davis who couldn’t determine a cause of death.
Perryman said it was at the end of a four-year drought, and she thinks the lack of fresh water may have contributed.
Moving to the suburbs
But the beavers left a legacy in the area, as their grandchildren spread into Walnut Creek (the waterway, not the city) and creeks in Pleasant Hill, Vallejo, Oakley, and Fairfield.
“We really don’t know why they left,” Perryman said. “They don’t write. They don’t call.”
She says every now and then, a beaver reappears near their old Alhambra Creek home.
“We have occasional drive-by beavers,” Perryman said. “They bite a few trees and reeds. I believe they’re children (of the original family) coming to see the old neighborhood.”
“We really don’t know why they left. They don’t write. They don’t call.” Heidi Perryman, Worth A Dam
Beaver Festival XVI will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and feature music, prizes, a beaver trading card swap meet, multiple nature exhibits, a paint-your-own-tail project, a giant mobile fish tank, a renowned chalk muralist, a beaver game show complete with flat-tail prizes, and more.
This year’s theme is how beaver ponds make a neighborhood and help creeks get healthier. Children are encouraged to collect trading cards while they learn and explore.
Susana Park is at 701 Susana St. in Martinez.