About: Stony Creek (Sacramento River tributary)

Stony Creek is a 73.5-mile (118.3 km)-long tributary of the Sacramento River in Northern California. It drains a watershed of more than 700 square miles (1,800 km2) on the west side of the Sacramento Valley in Glenn, Colusa, Lake and Tehama Counties. Stony Creek was named for the large amount of rocks and sediments it once washed down from the mountains during floods. Today, most of the sediment is trapped behind Black Butte Dam, a flood-control structure built in 1963. It is labeled on some maps as "Stoney Creek" or "Stone Creek" and was historically known as the Capay River.