The Phantom Lake
Tulare Lake was once the largest body of fresh water in the American West, a vast inland sea in California’s Central Valley about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. After its tributaries were dammed, diked and diverted a century ago, the lake dried up and the land was reclaimed for agriculture.
While little remained of the original Tulare Lake except for a few residual wetlands and marshes, the lake made several surprise comebacks in the second half of the 20th century. After reappearing in 1969, 1983, and 1997 following seasons of unusually heavy rainfall, some locals began referring to it as “the phantom lake.”
This year the lake has re-emerged once again. After one of the wettest winters in more than a century, the rivers carrying rain and snowmelt from the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains have overwhelmed the dams and levees designed to hold the water back, inundating an area the size of Lake Tahoe — about 180 square miles.
The lake is now so vast that when you gaze out from the water’s edge it extends as far as the eye can see, disappearing beyond the horizon like a shimmering mirage.
The floodwaters have been a disaster for the local economy of Corcoran, a community of about 22,000 people on the northeastern edge of Tulare Lake. While the levee protecting the town has held up, many of the low-lying ranches and farming operations on the other side of it have been completely inundated. It could take as long as two or three years for the waters to recede.
I’ve made several visits to Tulare Lake this year, documenting the devastation and talking with ranchers, farm hands, water officials and town residents about how the return of the lake has affected their lives and what it means for the future of their community. Here are a handful of my images.
For more images from the series, see Tulare: The Phantom Lake.