Dominguez Channel facts for kids

Dominguez Channel is a 15.7-mile-long (25.3 km) perennial river in southern Los Angeles County, California, and located in the center of the Dominguez Watershed of 110 square miles (280 km²).

The watershed area is 96% developed and largely residential. Subsurface storm drain tributaries (cave/grotto environments) and daylighted flood control channels have a dual function as habitat for wildlife and wildflowers. Lower Dominguez Channel, for the last few miles before reaching the ocean harbor, becomes a river estuary mixing freshwater and ocean water together, overlying a wetland soil between uncemented boulder levees that serves as wildlife habitat and wildflower habitat for migratory native birds and native wetland vegetation.

Course

The stream begins just south of 116th Street in Hawthorne and flows through El Camino Village, Gardena, Alondra Park, El Camino College, Torrance, Harbor Gateway, Carson, Wilmington, and empties into the East Basin of the Port of Los Angeles, in San Pedro Bay on the Pacific Ocean. There is a public community bicyle path with signage and native plant landscaping built atop the Dominguez River levee for several miles in the upper reach of the river in Hawthorne and El Camino Village and again in the lower reach of the river between Gardena and Carson, with several miles of the bicycle route in Torrance, not yet completed in the middle stretch, as well as no bicyle path through the private refinery to the terminus of the levee at the ocean harbor in Carson, Torrance, and Wilmington.

Crossings

Crossings (bridges) over Dominguez River from the mouth upstream to the source, includes 6 railroad bridges, 23 public streets, several private roads inside oil refinery properties, 2 freeways, 2 state highways, and 2 parking lots (one of which is at a California community college). The year built of the bridge are within parentheses behind the name of the bridge are listed below: