“Once, there was so much water that a steamship could carry agricultural supplies from the Bakersfield area up to Fresno and then up to San Francisco,” Underhill told the outlet.
A California “ghost lake” that disappeared in the 19th century is making its grand return after 130 years, swallowing up 94,000 acres and counting of private farmland.
The Tulare Lake in California’s San Joaquin Valley began to dry up in the late 1850s — not through some fluke, but through deliberate action taken to reshape the land at the expense of the existing ecosystem and nearby indigenous communities.
It vanished altogether around 1890 and reappeared with a vengeance in 2023, thanks to the massive winter storms across the Golden State and snowmelt from Sierra Nevada.
“Once, there was so much water that a steamship could carry agricultural supplies from the Bakersfield area up to Fresno and then up to San Francisco,” Underhill told the outlet.
A California “ghost lake” that disappeared in the 19th century is making its grand return after 130 years, swallowing up 94,000 acres and counting of private farmland.
The Tulare Lake in California’s San Joaquin Valley began to dry up in the late 1850s — not through some fluke, but through deliberate action taken to reshape the land at the expense of the existing ecosystem and nearby indigenous communities.
It vanished altogether around 1890 and reappeared with a vengeance in 2023, thanks to the massive winter storms across the Golden State and snowmelt from Sierra Nevada.