Image from the Aug 14, 1898 issue of the San Francisco Call, from an article titled “Tulare Lake Dried Up: Disappearance of the Largest Body of Fresh Water in California.” (Public Domain)
By DAN WALTERS | Orange County Register
PUBLISHED: March 16, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. | UPDATED: March 16, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
Spanish soldier and California explorer Pedro Fages was chasing deserters in 1772 when he came across a vast marshy lake and named it Los Tules for the reeds and rushes that lined its shore.
Situated between the later cities of Fresno and Bakersfield, Tulare Lake, as it was named in English, was the nation’s largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. It spread out to as much as 1,000 square miles as snow in the Sierra melted each spring, feeding five rivers flowing into the lake
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Its abundance of fish and other wildlife supported several Native American tribes, who built boats from the lake’s reeds to gather its bounty
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When the snowmelt was particularly heavy, the lake rose high enough that a natural spillway would divert water into the San Joaquin River and thence to the Pacific Ocean through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay.
As those diversions expanded in the 20th century, Tulare Lake gradually shrank an
Pine Flat Dam held but water roared down the mountains in the Kings and other rivers and very quickly, or so it seemed, Tulare Lake reappeared.
The Boswell and Salyer families, which had feuded for years, battled over whose lands would be flooded. Guards with shotguns patrolled the Tulare Basin Water Storage District’s levees as rumors spread about clandestine plans to dynamite them. That didn’t happen, but the Salyer holdings were inundated and the two agribusiness giants waged a legal battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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This bit of California history is offered because snowfall in the watersheds of the Kings and other rivers that flow naturally into the Tulare Lake basin is surpassing the record level of 1982-83. It’s almost certain that Tulare Lake will once again spring to life.
The probability is even generating some hopeful, if unrealistic, speculation that state and/or federal governments could buy up the lakebed’s fields and bring back Tulare Lake permanently.
CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to Commentary.
California’s ghostly Tulare Lake will be revived this year – Orange County Register (ocregister.com)
