120-945: The Sac-Joaquin Section (SJS) is the governing body of public and private high school athletics in parts of the Northern San Joaquin Valley , California . Its geographic area also covers the California portion of the Lake Tahoe region; however, three schools in that area—North Tahoe, Truckee, and South Tahoe High Schools—are instead members of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association due to their relative isolation from other California schools and their proximity to more populated areas in Nevada , especially in
240-710: A drop in the area's water table, resulted in the town's demise. The Depression -era migrants to the San Joaquin Valley from the South and Midwest are one of the more well-known groups in the Central Valley, in large part due to the popularity of John Steinbeck 's novel The Grapes of Wrath and the Henry Fonda movie made from it. By 1910, agriculture in the southern Great Plains had become nearly unviable due to soil erosion and poor rainfall. Much of
360-653: A fresh water lake. Lake Corcoran was the last widespread lake to fill the valley about 700,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Holocene there were three major lakes remaining in the southern part of the Valley, Tulare Lake, Buena Vista Lake and Kern Lake . In the late 19th and in the 20th century, agricultural diversion of the Kern River eventually dried out these lakes. Today, only a fragment of Buena Vista Lake remains as two small lakes Lake Webb and Lake Evans in
480-534: A given crop: Stockton produces the majority of the domestic asparagus consumed in the United States, and Fresno County is the largest producer of raisins. Cattle and sheep ranching are also vitally important to the valley's economy. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Miller & Lux corporation built an agricultural monopoly centered around cattle. The corporation can be characterized as
600-625: A hard-driving sound that is still deeply associated with the city. The San Joaquin Valley produces 12.8% of California's agricultural production (as measured by dollar value). Often called a breadbasket region, the valley farms emphasize fruits, vegetables and nuts more than grain for bread. Major crops include grapes (wine grapes, table grapes and raisins ), cotton , almonds , pistachios , citrus , and vegetables. Walnuts, oranges, peaches, garlic, tangerines, tomatoes, kiwis, hay, alfalfa and numerous other crops have been harvested with great success. Certain places are identified quite strongly with
720-589: A high plateau area known as the Tableland and drops 1,200 feet (370 m) over a glacial headwall , forming Tokopah Falls , before flowing west past Lodgepole Village and turning south. The two forks join at the bottom of a deep gorge directly below Moro Rock to form the main stem of the Kaweah River. The Kaweah River flows in a southwest direction, paralleled by Highway 198 in its narrow canyon. A short distance outside Sequoia National Park it picks up
840-621: A long hike is required to reach it. A California fishing license is required for visitors older than age 16 in the park. The upper Kaweah is also home to many hiking trails. Day hikes include the walk along Marble Fork to 1,200-foot (370 m) Tokopah Falls , and the Mineral King area along the East Fork also has a number of short trails. Backpacking is popular on the High Sierra Trail , which runs from Giant Forest through
960-494: A loss of as much as $ 11 billion each year. San Joaquin Valley is a major agricultural center of California. The agricultural demand for water far outstrips the urban and industrial demand. Overuse of nitrogen fertilizers and irrigated agriculture is common, and according to Thomas Harter, the chair for Water Resources Management and Policy at UC Davis, “more than 80 pounds of nitrogen per acre per year may leach into groundwater beneath irrigated lands, usually as nitrates”. Between
1080-625: A majority of Kern County in Southern California. Although the valley is predominantly rural, it has three densely populated urban centers: Stockton / Modesto , Fresno / Visalia , and Bakersfield . The San Joaquin Valley is the southern half of California's Central Valley . It extends from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta in the north to the Tehachapi Mountains in the south, and from
1200-409: A portion of the former Buena Vista Lakebed. The San Joaquin Valley has extremely hot, dry summers and pleasantly mild winters characterized by dense tule fog . Its rainy season normally runs from November through April. The valley has experienced a severe and intensifying megadrought since the early 2010s. This drought is not only affecting humans, with farmland taking much of the impact, but also
1320-611: A precursor to corporate farming transforming the yeoman farmer into wage workers. The success of the business can be attributed to founder Henry Miller 's direct management style which is reflected in his detailed correspondences to his subordinates. During recent years, dairy farming has greatly expanded in importance. As areas such as Chino and Corona have become absorbed into the suburban sprawl of Los Angeles, many dairy farmers have cashed out and moved their herds to Kings, Tulare, and Kern counties. Between 1990 and 2004, 28,092 hectares (70,231 acres) of agricultural land
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#17327762886641440-601: A productive agricultural region spanning more than 300,000 acres (120,000 ha). Before the diversion of its waters for irrigation , the river flowed into Tulare Lake , the usually dry terminal sink of a large endorheic basin in the southern San Joaquin Valley, also fed by the Kern and Tule Rivers and southern branches of the Kings River . The Yokuts and Western Mono are the main Native American groups in
1560-616: A source of drinking water for 90% of San Joaquin Valley's residents. Nitrates have found their way into the aquifers around the San Joaquin Valley, affecting over 250,000 people in communities that are poor and rural. In 2006, the State Water Resources Board took samples from domestic wells in Tulare County; they found that 40% of 181 domestic wells had nitrate levels above the 10 mg/L legal limit. Though locals have typically used filters for their water,
1680-635: A strong history in Stockton. Filipino organizations in Stockton are reflected in various commercial buildings identified as Filipino. Filipinos fought for the U.S. against Japan in WWII, in exchange for favorable immigration status. Stockton has been an adjunct to the San Francisco Bay Area, which was a major military production and transit area during WWII. Filipino emigration to Stockton followed. Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park marks
1800-408: A three-year drought was prompting changes to the agriculture industry in the valley. Farmers began using complex irrigation systems and using treated waste water to feed crops, while many were switching from farming cotton to other commodities, chief among them, almonds. California has long been one of the nation's most important oil-producing states, and the San Joaquin Valley has long since eclipsed
1920-481: A trickle, although the river often experiences flooding during rainstorms. Most of the water is diverted above Visalia for irrigation and groundwater recharge. With the exception of agricultural wastewater , water rarely flows any further downstream except in wet years. Extremely large storms can temporarily refill Tulare Lake, as occurred most recently in 2023. Due to its steep fall from the Sierra Nevada to
2040-552: Is 72.7%. According to the United States Census Bureau 's American Community Survey , six San Joaquin Valley counties had the highest percentage of residents living below the federal poverty line in 2006 of any counties in California. The report also showed that the same six counties were among the 52 counties with the highest poverty rate in the United States . The median income for a household in
2160-700: Is a federally recognized tribe of Kitanemuk , Yokuts , and Chumash indigenous people of California . Their ancestral homeland is the southern San Joaquin Valley, San Emigdio Mountains , and Tehachapi Mountains . Today they live in Kern County, California , headquartered in Wasco and Bakersfield, California . The Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians of California is a federally recognized tribe of indigenous people of California , Chukchansi or Foothills Yokuts , now located in Madera County in
2280-595: Is an eligible property for the National Register of Historic Places . Terminus Dam was constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1962 to help relieve the Kaweah Delta's chronic flooding. Prior to damming, the river could reach very high flows during winter storms, with a maximum of 80,700 cubic feet per second (2,290 m /s) in December 1955. However, the capacity of the main channel of
2400-502: Is free-flowing above Lake Kaweah so the rafting season depends entirely on the natural snowmelt, typically between April and July. Access to the Kaweah River for fishing, swimming and water play can be difficult in the Three Rivers area, because most of the river banks are on private property. In Sequoia National Park the river flows at the bottom of a deep canyon and can also be difficult to reach. The river just above Lake Kaweah
2520-536: Is important to maternal and child health and is another comparative indicator of community health. According to the California Department of Health Services, 37% of births in Merced County occurred with no or late prenatal care and the San Joaquin Valley average was 19.5% of births with no or late prenatal care. By comparison, the California average was 13.6% of births and the national average
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#17327762886642640-690: Is not state-maintained. The part east of unbuilt State Route 65 near Minkler is eligible for the State Scenic Highway System; the road east of Dunlap is the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway, a Forest Service Byway. Other important highways in the valley include State Route 46 (SR 46) and State Route 41 (SR 41), which respectively link the California Central Coast with Bakersfield and Fresno; State Route 33 (SR 33), which runs south to north along
2760-580: Is publicly accessible at the Slick Rock Recreation Area; however, this location is inundated most summers when the level of Lake Kaweah is high. Slick Rock, known to locals as "Boulder Beach", has rock climbing areas and historic Native American bedrock mortars. Lake Kaweah itself offers shoreline fishing and flatwater boating. The upper South Fork in Sequoia National Park has good fishing for wild rainbow trout, although
2880-469: Is the southern half of California 's Central Valley . Famed as a major breadbasket , the San Joaquin Valley is an important source of food, producing a significant part of California's agricultural output. San Joaquin Valley draws from eight counties of Northern and one of Southern California , including all of San Joaquin and Kings counties, most of Stanislaus , Merced , and Fresno counties, and parts of Madera and Tulare counties, along with
3000-632: The East Fork , which originates above 9,000 feet (2,700 m) elevation in the Mineral King valley, from the left. It continues past the town of Three Rivers , where it receives the North Fork , which begins in the Grant Grove area of Kings Canyon National Park . The South Fork enters from the left before the river empties into Lake Kaweah , the reservoir formed by Terminus Dam in
3120-562: The Environmental Protection Agency , meaning residents are exposed to air quality that is confirmed to be hazardous to human health. The region of the San Joaquin Valley has some of the richest soil that allows for the production of many crops. Crops in this region include: grapes, oranges, cotton, vegetables and nuts. The plethora of crop land allows for the valley to benefit from the income of crop sales. About sixty percent of California's crops come from
3240-547: The Gabriel Moraga party in 1806). Early Spanish names for the river included Rio de San Gabriel and Rio San Francisco. Several such expeditions were sent into the region, in order to conscript Native Americans into the mission system . Father Pedro Muñoz wrote that the Kaweah would be a good place for a mission, but none were ever established there, because it was too far from the coast and could not be easily defended. In
3360-701: The Great Western Divide , a chain of 13,000-foot (4,000 m) peaks in the middle of Sequoia National Park. The divide separates the Kaweah drainage from the Kern River drainage to the east. The Middle Fork, sometimes considered part of the main stem, flows southwest from the confluence of Lone Pine Creek and Hamilton Creek, whose lake sources lie at or above 12,000 feet (3,700 m) in the Mount Stewart area. The Middle Fork receives Cliff Creek near Redwood Meadow. The Marble Fork begins in
3480-547: The Los Angeles Basin as the state's primary oil production region. Scattered oil wells on small oil fields are found throughout the region, and several enormous extraction facilities – most notably near Lost Hills and Taft , including the enormous Midway-Sunset Oil Field , the third-largest oil field in the United States – are veritable forests of pumps. Shell operated a major refinery in Bakersfield; it
3600-809: The Pacific Ocean . The somewhat larger southern portion is the Tulare Basin, an endorheic basin centered on Tulare Lake . Historically, Tulare Lake was fed by the Tule River , the Kings River, the Kaweah River , the White River and the Kern River , but much of this water has been diverted for agricultural uses and the watershed is mostly dry in its lower reaches. The San Joaquin Valley began to form about 66 million years ago during
3720-588: The Paiute peoples of the Great Basin . Around 700 to 500 years ago, the Western Mono came to settle in the region as well. Oak trees grew in abundance along low-elevation, permanent streams and provided the staple food of acorns, which were used to make cakes and bread. Native Americans ground acorns into a fine mush using holes in the local granite bedrock as mortars . Permanent winter settlements in
CIF Sac-Joaquin Section - Misplaced Pages Continue
3840-633: The Reno area. It is one of ten sections that compose the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF). The SJS is split into seven divisions, each comprising several leagues. The section is governed by a board of managers, whose voting members include representatives from member leagues, superintendents, school board associations and private schools. There are 174 member schools, assigned to leagues or conferences according to NCS Alignment and Classification Bylaws developed by
3960-672: The Union Pacific Railroad does not currently allow the San Joaquins trains to run on the highly congested rail route over Tehachapi Pass , which is the only route between Bakersfield and Los Angeles . Passengers between these towns must travel on Amtrak Thruway buses. The San Joaquin Valley is also the location of the planned initial operating segment of the California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) project, which will run 171 miles from Bakersfield in
4080-505: The War in Vietnam . These immigrants, the majority of whom are Hmong , Laotian , Cambodian , and Vietnamese , have largely settled in the communities of Stockton, Modesto, Merced , and Fresno . Hmongs, Laotians, and Cambodians are the largest communities of Southeast Asians in the San Joaquin Valley, and the valley has some of the largest populations of these groups in the nation. Fresno has
4200-424: The ammonium nitrate that “accounts for more than half of the region’s PM2.5 on the area’s most polluted days.” Exacerbated by stagnant weather and the temperature drop of the cooler seasons, much of the air pollution becomes trapped beneath a layer of warmer air, resulting in a phenomenon known as temperature inversion and condensing the accumulation of pollutants within the valley. Population growth has caused
4320-472: The " Okies " of primarily English and Scots-Irish descent who migrated to California from the Midwest and South . Mennonite groups descended from Russian Germans settled in the areas of Reedley and Dinuba , as well as Lutheran and Catholic Volga Germans who settled in the broader Fresno area. The San Joaquin Valley has a large and exceptionally diverse Asian American population; primarily from
4440-545: The "River Francis", a corruption of the old Spanish name. Hale Tharp , a stockman and early settler in Three Rivers, discovered the Giant Forest in 1858 with the help of Native American guides. In 1861 Tharp returned to this area between the Middle and Marble forks of the Kaweah River, using a hollowed-out fallen sequoia log ( Tharp's Log ) as a cabin. In 1873, a silver boom in Mineral King attracted thousands of people to
4560-500: The 1860s and the 1880s when the U.S. government began establishing timber reserves in the area, under pressure from conservationists , including John Muir , who visited the Kaweah's Marble Fork and named Giant Forest in 1875. Logging mostly ended after Sequoia National Park was founded in 1890; the bill establishing the park was pushed through in part due to the actions of the Southern Pacific Railroad , which saw
4680-448: The 1950s and 1980s, when nitrogen fertilizer use grew sixfold, nitrate concentrations in groundwater increased 2.5 times. Fertilizer runoffs contributes roughly 90% of all nitrate inputs to the alluvial groundwater system. Within agriculture, the two major factors are High-Intensity Crop Production and Large Dairy Herds. Because these communities are cut off from larger water distribution, they are dependent on wells, making groundwater
4800-503: The 1970s onward, landlords and large corporations have also hired undocumented immigrants . This has allowed them to increase their profits due to low overhead on wages. The San Joaquin Valley has—by California standards—an unusually large number of European, Middle Eastern, and Asian ethnicities in the heritage of its citizens. These communities are often quite large and, relative to Americans immigration patterns, quite eclectic: for example, there are more Azorean Portuguese in
4920-675: The 1990s and 2000s. The other, Castle Air Force Base , located near Atwater was closed during the Base Realignment and Closure of the 1990s. Although both are in Kern County, Edwards Air Force Base and China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station are located in the High Desert area of that county. The California real estate boom that began in the late 1990s has significantly changed the San Joaquin Valley. Once distinctly and fiercely independent of Los Angeles and San Francisco,
CIF Sac-Joaquin Section - Misplaced Pages Continue
5040-561: The Bay Area's orbit as well. Bakersfield, traditionally a boom-bust oil town once described by urban scholar Joel Kotkin as an "American Abu Dhabi ," has seen a massive influx of former Los Angeles business owners and commuters, to the extent that gated communities containing million-dollar homes are going up on the city's outskirts. Wal-Mart , IKEA , Target , Amazon , CVS Pharmacy , Restoration Hardware , and other various large shipping firms have built huge distribution centers both in
5160-720: The California coastal ranges ( Diablo and Temblor ) in the west to the Sierra Nevada in the east. The valley contains two large river systems, divided north and south. The northern portion of San Joaquin Valley is called the San Joaquin Basin: the watershed of the San Joaquin River and its tributaries including parts of the Kings River , all of which drain northwest into the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and eventually out to
5280-413: The Kaweah Delta. Surface water provided the main supply as late as 1900, after which the area's abundant groundwater reserves were pumped at increasing rates. Tulare Lake disappeared by the early 1900s, and by the 1930s, agricultural development had surpassed the capacity of local water resources. In the 1960s Disney proposed to construct a ski resort in Mineral King, which would have brought one of
5400-482: The Kaweah River basin, which was explored by the Spanish in the early 1800s and heavily logged after the 1850s by American colonists, before its upper reaches became part of Sequoia National Park in 1890. The name "Kaweah" (commonly rendered as / k ə ˈ w iː ə / kə- WEE -ə ; the traditional pronunciation is / ˈ ɡ ɑː w iː h ɑː / GAH -wee-hah ) comes from a native Yokutsan ethnonym for
5520-457: The Kaweah River is only 5,500 cubic feet per second (160 m /s), and its distributaries have an even lower capacity. Four years after the dam's completion, it prevented $ 19.6 million of damage during a single storm in December 1966. However, the capacity of the reservoir, Lake Kaweah, was too small to control the most severe floods, and was so for many years until the completion of a spillway enhancement project in 2004. Six huge fuse gates ,
5640-456: The Kaweah basin was timber; many logging camps sprang up in the heavily forested western slopes of the Sierra, including in the watershed's sequoia groves. The Kaweah Colony was a utopian socialist community founded in 1886, along the Kaweah River in what is now Sequoia National Park. Although giant sequoia wood is generally too soft to be useful in construction, many sequoias were felled between
5760-676: The Kaweah colony as a competitor to logging operations that it owned elsewhere. Some settlers in the Kaweah Colony attempted to continue their operations but were later convicted of illegal logging, after which the colony dissolved in 1892. The Kaweah Delta (historically also known as the "Four Creeks area", after the four major branches of the Kaweah River) was one of the earliest places in the San Joaquin Valley to be populated and farmed by U.S. settlers, although before
5880-498: The Kaweah tribelet, traditionally said to mean "crow cry," from gá "raven" and wea "to weep." Frank F. Latta traced the etymology of gá to an onomatopoeia of a corvid 's call, cf. "caw" . An informant for Latta, Aida Icho, provided an idiom related to the allegedly quarrelsome nature of the (by then extinct) Kaweah: Gawea been gone long time. Now, when crow come in tree and quarrel, we say, Gáwea, he ahm tahnse [The Gáwea have come back].” The Kaweah River originates along
6000-603: The Kings County average of 1.1 beds per a thousand and the San Joaquin Valley average of 1.8 beds per a thousand were again less than the state average of 2.1 bed per a thousand. Consequently, the age adjusted death rate is significantly higher than the rest of California. In response the University of California with the University of California, Merced is exploring opening a research medical school specializing in rural care, in hopes that some graduates will settle in
6120-581: The McKay Point Dam, the St. John's River splits off to the northwest, making a wide loop around Visalia before becoming Cross Creek north of Goshen , from where it flows south. The main channel of the Kaweah River continues to the southwest through farmland, with Outside Creek and Deep Creek splitting to the south before the Kaweah itself divides into Mill Creek and Packwood Creek . Mill Creek continues westward through Visalia, and Packwood Creek skirts to
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#17327762886646240-508: The Middle Fork. The company then applied for permission to construct a third power plant on the Middle Fork inside Sequoia National Park, which was approved partly because at the time, this was an infrequently visited area of the park. The Kaweah No. 3 plant was completed by 1913, and was followed by more plans to construct a reservoir at Wolverton and at least two additional power plants. The Kaweah plants brought electricity to Visalia for
6360-454: The San Joaquin Valley and provide better healthcare. Currently, the Latino and Mexican descendants are large percentage of the demographics in the San Joaquin Valley. Since not long after the onset of the bracero program during World War II , all but a minor percentage of the farmworkers in the region have been of Mexican ancestry. Ethnic and economic friction between Mexican-Americans and
6480-528: The San Joaquin Valley at the time of the 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-year Estimates by United States Census Bureau reported a population of 4,080,509. The racial composition of San Joaquin Valley was 1,428,978 (35.0%) Non-Hispanic White, 2,048,280 (50.2%) Hispanic or Latino, 310,557 (7.6%) Asian, 193,694 (4.7%) Black or African American, 40,911 (1.0%) American Indian and Alaska Native, and 13,000 (0.32%) Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander. The educational attainment of high school graduate or higher
6600-542: The San Joaquin Valley during World War II, most of them going to Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego to work in war-related industries. Many of those who stayed ended up in Bakersfield and Oildale , as the southern San Joaquin Valley became an important area of oil production after major Southern California oil fields such as Signal Hill began to dry up. Country music legends Buck Owens and Merle Haggard came out of Bakersfield's honky-tonk scene and created
6720-707: The San Joaquin Valley has long suffered from some of the United States' worst air pollution . With a PM2.5 measure of 17 micrograms per cubic meter of air, the San Joaquin Valley’s air pollution readings exceed both California's Ambient Air Quality Standard of 12 micrograms per cubic meter, and the National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 9 micrograms per cubic meter. Some of the San Joaquin Valley’s sources of air pollution stem from vehicle emissions, agricultural practices, and crop and wildfires. The use of diesel and gasoline fueled vehicles produces an excess of nitrogen oxides ( NOx ), eventually forming nitric acid that reacts with ammonia gas from cow manure and urine to create
6840-398: The San Joaquin Valley is located in Hanford and includes a Doppler weather radar . Weather forecasts and climatological information for the San Joaquin Valley are available from its official website. The San Joaquin Valley was originally inhabited by the Yokuts and Miwok peoples . The first European to enter the valley was Pedro Fages in 1772. The Tejon Indian Tribe of California
6960-445: The San Joaquin Valley than in the Azores. Many groups are found in majorities in specific cities, and hardly anywhere else in the region. For example, Assyrians are concentrated in Turlock , Dutch in Ripon , and Croats in Delano . Kingsburg is famous for its distinctly Swedish air, having been founded by immigrants from that country. Ethnic groups found in a broader area are Portuguese , Germans , Armenians , Basques , and
7080-420: The San Joaquin Valley to rank with Los Angeles and Houston in most measures of air pollution. Only the Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles has worse overall air quality, and the San Joaquin Valley led the nation in 2004 in the number of days with quantities of ozone considered unhealthy by the Environmental Protection Agency . The San Joaquin Valley has been deemed an "extreme non-attainment zone" by
7200-404: The San Joaquin Valley, making it one of the steepest river drainages in the United States. Although the main stem of the Kaweah is only 33.6 miles (54.1 km) long, its total length including headwaters and lower branches is nearly 100 miles (160 km). The lower course of the river and its many distributaries – including the St. John's River and Mill Creek – form the Kaweah Delta,
7320-472: The San Joaquin Valley, only the Wilmington Oil Field in Los Angeles County has untapped reserves greater than 100,000,000 barrels (16,000,000 m ), while six fields in the San Joaquin Valley (Midway-Sunset, Kern River , South Belridge , Elk Hills , Cymric , and Lost Hills ) each have reserves exceeding 100,000,000 barrels (16,000,000 m ) of oil. The isolation and vastness of the San Joaquin Valley, as well as its poverty and need for jobs, have led
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#17327762886647440-505: The San Joaquin Valley, the Kaweah River passes through a wide range of climate and vegetation zones in a relatively short distance. Historically, the lower Kaweah flowed into a vast area of seasonally flooded wetlands surrounding Tulare Lake, almost all of which have been diked and drained for agriculture. The Kaweah historically formed a large overflow area east of Visalia known as the "Visalia Swamp" and in areas west of Visalia stream channels were poorly defined, often simply disappearing into
7560-447: The San Joaquin Valley. Aside from the collapse of median home values, persistent crime, unemployment and poverty were common factors between Bakersfield , Fresno , Merced , Modesto and Stockton – every major city of the San Joaquin Valley. Insufficient access to medicine in the United States, in particular prenatal and preventive care, is typified by both rural and inner city communities. Early and adequate access to prenatal care
7680-415: The San Joaquin Valley. The Santa Rosa Rancheria belongs to the federally recognized Tachi Yokuts tribe and is located 4.5 miles (7.24 km) southeast of Lemoore, California , in the San Joaquin Valley. Since 2010, statewide droughts in California have further strained both the San Joaquin Valley's and the Sacramento Valley's water security . The total population of the eight counties comprising
7800-406: The Sierra Nevada foothills. Terminus Dam, a 255-foot (78 m) high earthfill dam, has the primary purpose of flood control but also supplies water for irrigation and hydroelectricity. Below the dam the Kaweah River passes Lemon Cove , receives Dry Creek (also known as Lime Kiln Creek) from the right and flows into the San Joaquin Valley where it divides into several major distributaries . At
7920-437: The United States and international service to Mexico. Additionally, there are three nonprimary airports in the region: Meadows Field Airport near Bakersfield , Stockton Metropolitan Airport and Merced Municipal Airport . The San Joaquins service handles passenger traffic between Bakersfield and Stockton with extensions to either Sacramento or Oakland . Amtrak rail service does not continue south of Bakersfield, as
8040-422: The area as part of Sequoia National Park. In order to make the Kaweah Delta suitable for agriculture and eventually urban development, the tangle of diverging seasonal channels and marshes had to be drained and diked extensively. As early as the 1870s local irrigation companies were dredging some creeks and blocking off side channels in order to direct floodwater away from farms. A major early 20th century project
8160-419: The area but were hunted or trapped out entirely by the early 1900s. The mountain areas continue to provide habitat for black bears , mule deer, and bighorn sheep , and the Kaweah River above Three Rivers has native rainbow trout and introduced brown trout and bass. In alpine areas above the tree line, small mammals such as marmots and pika are common. The Kaweah River watershed was originally inhabited by
8280-412: The area has seen increasing exurban development as the cost of living forces young families and small businesses further and further away from the coastal urban cores. Stockton, Modesto, Tracy (as well as the nearby city of Mountain House ), Manteca, and Los Banos are increasingly dominated by commuters to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and the small farming towns to the south are finding themselves in
8400-407: The construction of Terminus Dam the entire area was frequently flooded; the Great Flood of 1862 temporarily changed the course of the river, creating the distributary today known as St. John's River. Agriculture began in the Kaweah Delta around 1864 when a group of local farmers dug the Consolidated Peoples' Ditch. The people of Visalia hired Native Americans to extend a canal from Mill Creek to power
8520-550: The district utilizes Central Valley Project water from the Friant-Kern Canal , which delivers water from the San Joaquin River to the Tulare Basin. Water can be turned out into either the Kaweah or St. Johns rivers, augmenting the water supply available to Kaweah Delta users. Groundwater is the other important source of water supply for the basin. The local aquifer has suffered from overdraft for many decades with an estimated annual deficit of 40,000 acre-feet (49,000,000 m ) between pumping and replenishment. In order to increase
8640-409: The early Paleocene era. Broad fluctuations in the sea level caused various areas of the valley to be flooded with ocean water for the next 60 million years. About 5 million years ago, the marine outlets began to close due to uplift of the coastal ranges and the deposition of sediment in the valley. Starting 2 million years ago, a series of glacial episodes periodically caused much of the valley to become
8760-563: The expanding settlement's flour mill. In addition, multiple channels had to be dug to redirect the flow of St. John's River back into the Kaweah, which had been blocked by sediment during the 1862 flood. It was not until after the Wright Act of 1887 , however, that farming expanded significantly. The Wright Act allowed the formation of the Tulare Irrigation District, which began to establish a network of canals across
8880-510: The filters need to be installed correctly and replaced frequently, which may not be economically feasible for the residents in Orosi. Table 2 on page 20 from Pacific Institute 's "The Human Costs of Nitrate-contaminated Drinking Water in the San Joaquin Valley" indicates the water systems that were contaminated with nitrates over the legal limit, the percentage of the population affected that are non-white and that are below or near poverty-level, and
9000-532: The first major infestation of the boll weevil .) When the onset of the Great Depression created a national banking crisis, family farmers—usually heavily in debt—often had their mortgages foreclosed by banks desperate to shore up their balance sheets. In response, many farmers loaded their families and portable possessions into their automobiles and drove west. Many of the Okies and Arkies left
9120-462: The first time, and the power was also used by farmers to pump groundwater . However, construction of the Wolverton dam was thwarted by bad foundation rock and the other power plants were also never built. Taken over by Southern California Edison in 1917, the system today consists of six dams, three powerhouses, three forebays and many miles of concrete and wooden flumes. The Kaweah No. 3 plant
9240-474: The following decades, Native American resistance to Spanish colonial government prompted many military raids, killing many of the natives who had not already succumbed to European diseases. After California became a U.S. state, the California Gold Rush drew some prospectors to the Kaweah in the 1850s, but not much gold mining occurred in the area. During this time, the Kaweah was often known as
9360-417: The foothills consisted of pit houses thatched with tules (vast amounts of which once grew in the marshes of the Kaweah delta) up to 31 feet (9.4 m) in diameter. Hospital Rock, a flat next to the Middle Fork, was used as a camp possibly as early as the 1300s AD. Spanish explorers came to the Kaweah River area in the early 1800s, although it is not clear who first explored the Kaweah Delta (possibly
9480-465: The high mountain valley along the East Fork. The peak of mining had passed by 1882, when the Empire Mine (owned by state senator Thomas Fowler, who invested most of his fortune in the mine) went under. Small operations continued, sporadically, into the late 1920s. After the end of silver mining, Mineral King became a popular summer resort. The one resource extraction industry that succeeded in
9600-539: The indigenous Yokuts people of the Central Valley . By at least 3,000 years ago, a group known as the Wukchumni had permanent settlements along the river. The greatest concentration of Native American settlements was along the foothill reach of the Kaweah River, in what is today Three Rivers and Lake Kaweah. The Wukchumni spent summers hunting game and gathering herbs along the East Fork, and they traded with
9720-515: The land in this area. However, the unhealthy air levels that arise from smog lead to the destruction of many crops. According to the California Air Resources Board the San Joaquin Valley loses about one billion dollars every year due to the pollution in the air destroying these crops. Furthermore, as crops and vegetation die off from the air and water quality, farmers sometimes turn to burning to dispose of them. Due to
9840-502: The lands drained and crossed by the river's many distributaries down to the Tulare Lake bed, the Kaweah River hydrologic region covers 1,523 square miles (3,940 km ). The annual runoff of the Kaweah River between 1975 and 1995 was 443,000 acre-feet (546,000,000 m ), or about 600 cubic feet per second (17 m /s). The river's highest flows are during the peak snowmelt months of May and June; winter flows are usually more of
9960-562: The largest U.S. city without an Interstate highway), while SR 99 runs through them. Both highways then merge at the southern end of valley en route to Los Angeles. When the Interstate Highway System was created in the 1950s, the decision was made to build I-5 as an entirely then-new freeway bypass instead of upgrading the then-existing U.S. 99 . Since then, state and federal representatives have pushed to convert SR 99 to an Interstate, although this cannot occur until all of
10080-466: The largest of their type in the world, were added to the dam; the reservoir can now safely hold 185,600 acre-feet (228,900,000 m ) of water, an increase of 30 percent from the original capacity. All the forks of the Kaweah River are located in Sequoia National Park, which receives more than 1.2 million recreational visitors each year. The river is a major park attraction for boating and fishing, but can be "extremely hazardous" during high water in
10200-573: The largest tree in the world by volume. Redwood Mountain Grove, the largest sequoia grove in the world at 3,100 acres (1,300 ha), and 21 other groves are also located in the Kaweah watershed. A relatively small portion of the Kaweah basin is high, craggy alpine country typical of the southern Sierra; such treeless, lake-studded areas of exposed granite are mostly found along the crest of the Great Western Divide. Today, mule deer are
10320-438: The largest trees on Earth. It then flows in a southwest direction to Lake Kaweah – the only major reservoir on the river – and into the San Joaquin Valley , where it diverges into multiple channels across an alluvial plain around Visalia . With its Middle Fork headwaters starting at almost 13,000 feet (4,000 m) above sea level, the river has a vertical drop of nearly two and a half miles (4.0 km) on its short run to
10440-422: The largest wild animal inhabiting the valley and foothill area; historically, large herds of tule elk frequented the area, but their habitat in the Kaweah Delta has been almost eliminated by agriculture. There are many species of foxes, wildcats, squirrels, and rabbits including the endemic San Joaquin kit fox , San Joaquin antelope squirrel , and others. California grizzly bear and beaver were once common to
10560-419: The location of the only California town to be founded, financed and governed by African Americans. The small farming community was founded in 1908 by Lt. Colonel Allen Allensworth , Professor William Payne, William Peck, a minister, John W. Palmer, a miner, and Harry A. Mitchell, a real estate agent, dedicated to improving the economic and social status of African Americans. Uncontrollable circumstances, including
10680-456: The main cities are Visalia and Tulare . The length of the Kaweah River is 33.6 miles (54.1 km) between the confluence of the Middle and Marble Forks and the bifurcation of Mill and Packwood Creeks. However, including its tributaries and distributaries, the river is much longer. Mill Creek (the largest distributary stream) flows westward for 25.1 miles (40.4 km) to Cross Creek, for a total distance of 58.7 miles (94.5 km). Including
10800-449: The marsh lands during periods of high water. The foothill zone is characterized mostly by grassland and rangeland; California oak woodland occurs along the Kaweah River and its perennial tributaries, although its range has been much reduced since Native American times. Further upstream and higher in elevation, the watershed is mostly mixed coniferous forest (pines and firs). The largest concentrations of giant sequoias, which grow only on
10920-551: The most intense developments in the history of the upper Kaweah watershed. The resort would have included 22 ski lifts, a 1,030-room hotel, ten restaurants, and a railroad along the canyon of the East Fork Kaweah River to transport visitors from a parking area further down the mountain. Environmentalists fought against the proposal for many years, and in 1978 the National Parks and Recreation Act designated
11040-557: The mountains through Clovis and many smaller communities. This route is part of the California Freeway and Expressway System and is eligible for the State Scenic Highway System. State Route 180 is a state highway which runs through the heart of the San Joaquin Valley from Mendota through Fresno to Kings Canyon National Park. A short piece near the eastern end, through the Grant Grove section of Kings Canyon National Park,
11160-514: The poor air quality. The elderly population is also vulnerable to air pollution and could even suffer from heart attacks due to decreased lung functions. Reports state that the residents in this community suffer from high rates of asthma and experience many related symptoms. The American Lung Association attributes the noxious gas in the San Joaquin Valley to roughly 1,300 premature deaths every year, including public impacts such as lost days of school or work and emergency room visits, and
11280-606: The portions of SR 99 between I-5 and the U.S. 50 junction in Sacramento are upgraded to Interstate standards . State Route 58 (SR 58), which is a freeway in Bakersfield and along most of its route until its terminus in Barstow , is an extremely important and very heavily traveled route for truckers from the valley and the Bay Area who want to cross the Sierra Nevada and leave California (by way of Interstate 15 or Interstate 40 ) without having to climb Donner Pass or brave
11400-399: The potential to damage aqueducts, roads, bridges, and flood-control structures. In the long term, the subsidence caused by extracting groundwater could irreversibly reduce the underground aquifer's water storage capacity, although immediate and short term needs are given higher priority and sense of urgency than long term sustainability. The National Weather Service Forecast Office for
11520-594: The rate of groundwater recharge , more than 40 recharge basins or spreading grounds totaling 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) have been constructed throughout the district, which allow floodwaters to percolate into the ground. Hydroelectric power development on the Kaweah River began when the Mount Whitney Power Company built a diversion, flume and the Kaweah No. 1 powerhouse on the East Fork in 1899. In 1905 it completed Kaweah No. 2 powerhouse on
11640-516: The regions of Punjab in India and Pakistan, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia, especially Laos and Cambodia. Punjabi Sikh Americans have immigrated to the San Joaquin Valley since the early 1900s and 1910s, and remain a very large presence in the area. To this day, Punjabi is the third most spoken language in the San Joaquin Valley region, after English and Spanish, and the first Sikh Gurdwara
11760-487: The rural population of states such as Kansas , Texas , Oklahoma , and Arkansas left at this time, selling their land and moving to Chicago , Kansas City , Detroit , and fast-growing Los Angeles . Those who remained experienced continuing deterioration of conditions, which reached their nadir during the drought that began in the late 1920s and created the infamous Dust Bowl . (Small cotton farmers in states such as Mississippi and Alabama suffered similar problems from
11880-492: The schools. Small school, football only division The following is a list of the top-10 schools in the section in order of team championships won: San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( / ˌ s æ n hw ɑː ˈ k iː n / SAN whah- KEEN ; Spanish : Valle de San Joaquín )
12000-498: The second-largest Hmong population of any American metropolitan area after Minneapolis–Saint Paul , and Stockton is believed to have the largest percentage of Cambodian Americans of any major American metropolitan area. Merced , Modesto, Fresno, Visalia , and Stockton have some of the largest populations of Laotian Americans in the United States. The Filipino American population is concentrated in Delano and Lathrop . Filipinos have
12120-555: The south of the city, terminating in a small flood control basin. Mill Creek ends at a confluence with Cross Creek, which flows southward to the old Tulare Lake bed near Corcoran , joining a channel carrying water from the Tule River . The Kaweah Delta region, as defined by the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District, covers about 340,000 acres (140,000 ha) in Tulare and Kings Counties;
12240-623: The south to Merced in the north. Freight service is provided by BNSF Railway , Union Pacific Railroad and San Joaquin Valley Railroad . The valley is served by the Western Area Power Administration . Western owns and operates its own equipment here and so performs its own weed management . Rotating and mixing herbicide modes of action are employed to preserve efficacy . Hemmed in by mountains and rarely having strong winds to disperse smog ,
12360-451: The southern end of the valley and northern part of the valley because of quick access to major interstates and low local wages. Further integration with the rest of the state is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Interstate 5 (I-5) and State Route 99 (SR 99) each run nearly the entire length of the San Joaquin Valley. I-5 runs in the western part of the valley, bypassing the major population centers (including Fresno, currently
12480-589: The spring and summer. Several commercial outfitters serve the traditional Class IV section of the Kaweah River between the Pumpkin Hollow bridge (near the park entrance) and Lake Kaweah. Advanced kayakers frequent the Class V Middle Fork at Hospital Rock, further upstream in Sequoia National Park; the North Fork is a wilderness run, requiring boaters to carry all their equipment to the put-in. The river
12600-538: The state to build numerous prisons in the area. The most notable of these is Corcoran , whose inmates have included Charles Manson and Juan Corona . Other correctional facilities in the valley are at Avenal , Chowchilla , Tracy , Delano , Coalinga , and Wasco . The only significant military base in the region is Naval Air Station Lemoore , a vast air base located 25 kilometres (16 mi) WSW of Hanford . Unlike many of California's other military installations, NAS Lemoore's operational importance has increased in
12720-461: The streams have either disappeared or been channelized, and Tulare Lake itself is now a dry, diked basin that only very occasionally floods. The Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District manages the distribution of water to irrigation districts and city water districts over a 340,000-acre (140,000 ha) service area. The primary crops grown in the district are cotton, various fruits, nuts, alfalfa, and other field crops. In addition to surface water,
12840-689: The surplus of crop burning to clear land. more air pollution is created, adding to the severity of the San Joaquin Valley's already poor air quality. The San Joaquin Valley suffers from extremely high ozone levels that tend to increase even more on hot days. Kids are more inclined to play outdoors during summer when the weather is warmer. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency this could lead to health issues such as asthma because these children are not fully developed yet. Roughly one in six children in this region suffer from asthma due to
12960-536: The traffic congestion of Los Angeles . Proposals have also been made to designate this highway as a western extension of I-40 once the entirety of the route between Mojave and Barstow has been upgraded to a freeway. This would provide an Interstate connection for Bakersfield, currently the second-largest U.S. city without an Interstate. The most recent additions to this system are State Routes 168 and 180. Route 168 begins in Fresno on Route 180 linking to Huntington Lake in
13080-432: The upstream Middle Fork, which is about 15 mi (24 km) long, and the length of Cross Creek below Mill Creek, which is 21.7 miles (34.9 km), some water in the Kaweah system flows 95 miles (153 km) from the head of the Middle Fork to the Tulare Lake bed. Most of the Kaweah River's runoff comes from the mountain watershed above Visalia, which covers a total of 658 square miles (1,700 km ). Including all
13200-414: The valley was $ 46,713. The poverty rate for individuals below the poverty level is 23.7%. In 2005 U.S. congressional researchers compared the economically distressed Valley to the traditionally impoverished Appalachia region, resulting in the appellation New Appalachia . In 2011 Forbes, after taking the fluctuation of median home values, five of the top twenty "most miserable cities" were located in
13320-575: The valley's predominantly white farming elite manifested itself most notably during the 1960s and 1970s, when the United Farm Workers , led by César Chávez , went on numerous strikes and called for boycotts of table grapes. The UFW generated enormous sympathy throughout the United States, even managing to terminate several agricultural mechanization projects at the United States Department of Agriculture . However, from
13440-582: The valley's western rim and provides a connection to Ventura and Santa Barbara over the Santa Ynez Mountains ; and State Route 152 (SR 152), an important commuter route linking Silicon Valley with its fast-growing exurbs such as Los Banos . The busiest airport in San Joaquin Valley is the Fresno Yosemite International Airport , which offers scheduled passenger flights to several major airline hubs in
13560-484: The western slope of the Sierra Nevada, are found in this section of the Kaweah watershed at mean elevations of 6,600 feet (2,000 m), although specimens have been found as low as 2,800 feet (850 m). The Kaweah watershed includes Giant Forest , the most visited and accessible of all the sequoia groves, located on the divide between the Middle and Marble Forks; it includes the General Sherman Tree ,
13680-628: The wildlife as well. In August 2015, the Director of the California Department of Water Resources stated, "Because of increased pumping, groundwater levels are reaching record lows—up to 100 feet lower than previous records." Research from NASA shows that parts of the San Joaquin Valley sank as much as 8 inches (0.20 m) in a four-month period, and land near Corcoran sank 13 inches (0.33 m) in 8 months. The sinking has destroyed thousands of groundwater well casings and has
13800-555: The year since the violations began. Kaweah River The Kaweah River is a river draining the southern Sierra Nevada in Tulare County , California in the United States. Fed primarily by high elevation snowmelt along the Great Western Divide , the Kaweah begins as four forks in Sequoia National Park , where the watershed is noted for its alpine scenery and its dense concentrations of giant sequoias ,
13920-523: Was 10% of births Likewise, the counties of the San Joaquin Valley have relatively high ratios of population to physicians, suggesting relatively low access, with the highest in Kings County at 1,027 patients per a physician, the San Joaquin Valley average at approximately 671 patients per a physician and the California average of 400 patients per a physician. Another measure of access is licensed acute care hospital beds per thousand population, where
14040-399: Was founded in Stockton in 1915. Following abolition of immigration restrictions from Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, large numbers of Pakistanis and Indians from Punjab, Gujarat, and Southern India have settled in these valley communities including Modesto , Livingston , Fresno , Stockton , and Lodi . In addition, the late 1970s and '80s saw an influx of immigrants from Indochina following
14160-525: Was lost to urban development in the San Joaquin Valley. Although there have been some token efforts at confronting the problems of (sub) urban sprawl , the politically conservative climate of the Valley generally prefers traditional suburban sprawl type of growth such as low density housing and strip malls anchored by so-called big box stores and opposes measures such as "Smart Growth", "Transit Oriented Development", "High Density Housing", and increased public transit such as light and commuter rail. By August 2014,
14280-537: Was sold in 2005 to Flying J , a Salt Lake -based firm that operates truck stops and refineries. Flying J's bankruptcy in 2009 resulted in the refinery being shut down. The oil and gas fields in Kern County are receiving increased attention since the July 2009 announcement by Occidental Petroleum of significant discovery of oil and gas reserves Even prior to this discovery the region retains more oil reserves than any other part of California. Of California fields outside of
14400-426: Was the channelization of Mill Creek, which runs through the middle of Visalia and posed a major flooding threat before it was straightened, deepened and widened in 1910 at a cost of $ 70,000. Dams were built in the 1920s and 1930s at McKays Point to divide water flow between the Kaweah and St. Johns Rivers, to satisfy downstream water rights. Today, the Kaweah Delta has very little resemblance to historic times; most of
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