Tulare Lake, located in California ’s San Joaquin Valley, was once one of the largest bodies of freshwater in the whole of the US .
But, some 130 years ago it disappeared – thanks largely to the greed of colonialists, who drained its waters to create arable farmland.
And yet, last year, the once-cherished lake suddenly reemerged, bringing with it both positive and painful effects.
Back in the late 19th Century, Tulare stretched more than 100 miles long and 30 miles wide, and was “the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi River ”, Vivian Underhill of Northeastern University explained in a news release .
At this time, it contained so much water that a steamship could carry “agricultural supplies from the Bakersfield area up to Fresno (at the heart of the San Joaquin Valley) and then up to San Francisco” — a distance of nearly 300 miles – she said.
However, in the succeeding decades, the “ancestral lakes” and connecting waterways that made such a route possible all but vanished thanks to manmade irrigation.