But it comes back every few decades when the snowpack runoff is heavy – the last time in 1983. The lake is a reminder of what California once was and what perhaps it will be.
Once the United States’ largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, it dried up after World War II, its water gradually diverted for farms and cities. With the Sierra Nevada’s record snowpack melting, the lake could double in size, threatening a town of 20,000 and a prison housing 8,000.Tulare Lake has never entirely left. For now, it is a 100 square-mile bowl of waist-deep water in California’s Central Valley, submerging prime dairy farms and almond groves.
Tulare Lake is both a curiosity and a disaster.
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