Tulare Lake

rdf:langString Tulare Lake

rdf:langString Tulare Lake

rdf:langString Tulare Lake

rdf:langString center

rdf:langString Drawing of the lush environment of Tulare Lake in 1875, including fishing and sailing boats

rdf:langString Drawing of the dry, cracked, and barren former lakebed of Tulare in California in 1898

rdf:langString dry bed

rdf:langString Map of the Tulare Lake hydrologic region, including aqueducts and dry lake beds

rdf:langString Drawing of a photograph of Tulare Lake from 1875

rdf:langString The dry lakebed of Tulare as it appeared in 1898

rdf:langString dry

rdf:langString Dry Tulare Lakebed 1898.png

rdf:langString Tulare Lake 1875.png

rdf:langString Kings River

rdf:langString Tule River

rdf:langString dry bed

rdf:langString Evaporation, historically underground seepage to San Joaquin River

rdf:langString California

rdf:langString Tulare Lake (/tʊˈlɛəri/) (Spanish: Laguna de Tache, Yokuts: Pah-áh-su) is a freshwater dry lake with residual wetlands and marshes in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. After Lake Cahuilla disappeared in the 17th century, Tulare Lake was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River and the second-largest freshwater lake entirely in the United States (as parts of the Great Lakes belong to Canada), based upon surface area. A remnant of Pleistocene-era Lake Corcoran, Tulare Lake dried up after its tributary rivers were diverted for agricultural irrigation and municipal water uses. The lake was named for the tule rush (Schoenoplectus acutus) that lined the marshes and sloughs of its shores. The lake was part of a 13,670-square-mile (35,400 km2) partially endorheic basin, at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, where it received water from the Kern, Tule, and Kaweah Rivers, as well as from southern distributaries of the Kings. It was separated from the rest of the San Joaquin Valley by tectonic subsidence and alluvial fans extending out from Los Gatos Creek in the Coast Ranges and the Kings River in the Sierra Nevada. Above a threshold elevation of 207 to 210 feet, it overflowed into the San Joaquin River. This happened in 19 of 29 years from 1850 to 1878. No overflows occurred after 1878 due to increasing diversions of tributary waters for agricultural irrigation and municipal water uses, and by 1899, the lake was dry except for residual wetlands and occasional floods. Tulare Lake was the largest of several similar lakes in its lower basin. Most of the Kern River's flow first went into Kern Lake and Buena Vista Lake via the Kern River and Kern River Slough southwest and south of the site of Bakersfield. If they overflowed, it was through the Kern River channel northwest through tule marshland and , into Tulare Lake.