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Concept
Tulare Lake
Summary
Tulare Lake (tʊˈlɛəri) or Tache Lake (Yokuts: Pah-áh-su, Pah-áh-sē) is a freshwater lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. Historically, Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River, and the second-largest freshwater lake entirely in the United States based upon surface area. For thousands of years, from the Paleolithic onward, Tulare Lake was a uniquely rich area, which supported perhaps the largest population of Native Americans north of Mexico.
In the second half of the 1800s, Tulare Lake was dried up by diverting its tributary rivers for agricultural irrigation and municipal water uses. In modern times, it is usually a dry lake with residual wetlands and marshes. The lake reappears during unusually high levels of rainfall or snow melt as did after floods in 1969, 1983, 1997, and 2023. In such a state, it has persisted for as long as two years.
The Spanish word tulare refers to a field of tule rush. Spanish captain Pedro Fages led the first excursions to the southern San Joaquin Valley in 1773.
This plain will exceed one hundred and twenty leagues in length and in parts is twenty, fifteen and even less in width. It is all a labyrinth of lakes and tulares, and the river San Francisco, divided into several branches, winding in the middle of the plain, now enters and now flows out of the lakes, until very near to the place where it enters into the estuary of the river.
Tulare ultimately derives from Classical Nahuatl tōllin, "sedge" or "reeds". The name is thus cognate with various Mesoamerican sites, such as Tula and Tultepec.
A Tachi name of the lake is Pa'ashi which translates to "big water". Other variants include Chentache (or Chintache) and Chataqui.
Lake Corcoran
Before 600,000 years ago, Lake Corcoran covered the Central Valley of California. 600,000 years ago a new outlet formed in the present day San Francisco Bay, rapidly carving an outlet through Carquinez Strait, probably catastrophically, and drained the lake, leaving the Buena Vista, Kern and Tulare Lakes as remnants.
Official source
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