For a brief stretch in California’s San Joaquin Valley, roads, tomato fields, cotton land and pistachio orchards gave way to blue water.
That water was Tulare Lake, also known as Pa’ashi to the Tachi Yokut Tribe. Once one of the largest freshwater bodies in the western United States, the lake had been drained into farmland more than a century earlier. Then, after a winter of atmospheric rivers and heavy snowmelt, it returned.
By spring 2023, the lake covered more than 100,000 acres, according to The Guardian’s March 2024 report on Tulare Lake’s shrinking. Local station FOX26 News reported that Tulare Lake peaked at roughly 120,000 acres, covering more than 10% of Kings County.
Less than a year later, much of it was gone again.
Atmospheric Rivers Sent Water Back Into an Old Lakebed
Tulare Lake sits in the San Joaquin Valley, a dry agricultural region where the old lakebed had long been converted into farmland. Northeastern University reported in February 2024 that the lake returned after a series of severe weather events, including atmospheric rivers that brought heavy rain and snowfall to California.
Vivian Underhill, an ethnographer and environmental justice scholar who researched the lake while at Northeastern, described Tulare Lake as once stretching more than 100 miles long and more than 30 miles wide. She told Northeastern that it was “the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River.”
The lake was not mainly fed by local rainfall. Underhill said it was supplied primarily by snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada mountains. Because the valley has no natural outlet, water can collect in the basin when enough snowmelt and runoff arrive.
That is what happened in 2023. Water flowed back into the depression where the lake once sat, turning dry land and agricultural fields back into a body of water.
Draining Pa’ashi Turned a Vast Wetland Into Farmland
The return of Tulare Lake was striking because the lake had been largely absent from the modern landscape for generations. Northeastern reported that the lake began disappearing in the late 1850s and early 1860s as California pushed land into private ownership and settlers drained waterlogged land for agriculture.
Underhill said the process was called “reclamation,” which often meant draining flooded land or irrigating desert land to make it farmable. She described the project as tied to the transfer of historically Indigenous land into private hands.
In her Open Rivers Journal articleon the return of Pa’ashi, Underhill placed the lake’s return in a broader history of colonial water management and what she called “colonial unknowing.” Her article argues that the lake’s disappearance was not only a hydrological event, but also part of a larger process by which California’s wetland history was pushed out of public understanding.
That framing matters because Tulare Lake can be described in two very different ways. To some officials and farmers, its 2023 return was a flood that damaged land and disrupted livelihoods. To the Tachi Yokut Tribe and researchers such as Underhill, it was also the return of a lake to a place where water had historically belonged.
Birds Returned as Farms, Roads and Power Lines Flooded
The return of Tulare Lake produced sharply different effects across the region.
Northeastern reported that birds, fish and amphibians returned to the area after the lake reappeared. Underhill said birds including pelicans, hawks and waterbirds came back, and that the Tachi Yokut people had seen burrowing owls nesting around the shore.
For the Tachi Yokut Tribe, Underhill described the lake’s return as spiritually powerful. She told Northeastern that ceremonies were held near the lake and that traditional hunting and fishing practices had resumed.
For agricultural workers, landowners and farming operations, the same water caused serious harm. The Guardian reported that the lake spread across fields and roads, threatened towns, forced the evacuation of thousands of cows and affected roads and power lines. FOX26 reported that some power customers remained without service because conditions prevented transformers from being reinstalled.
The water also raised safety concerns. The Guardian reported that officials warned visitors to stay out of the lake because the water contained hazards such as irrigation hoses, manure and agricultural chemicals.
Officials Said the Lake Was Disappearing Faster Than Expected
Early predictions suggested Tulare Lake could remain for years. By March 2024, local officials were saying the water was receding faster than expected.
FOX26 reported on March 5, 2024, that about 2,600 acres remained underwater, compared with a peak of roughly 120,000 acres. Sergeant Nate Ferrier with the Kings County Sheriff’s Office told the station that farming was beginning to return, with tractors and trucks moving around and fields being prepared for crops again.
The Guardian later reported that Tulare Lake had shrunk to 2,625 acres, citing the Kings County Office of Emergency Services. Abraham Valencia, with that office, told The Guardian that officials expected the lake’s “imminent disappearance,” unless unforeseen snowmelt runoff caused upstream flooding.
That rapid retreat complicates the story of Tulare Lake’s return. It was not a permanent restoration project. It was a reappearance driven by unusually wet conditions, heavy snowmelt and the basin’s natural shape.
FOX26 said about 2,600 acres of Tulare Lake remained underwater.