California’s ghostly Tulare Lake will be revived in 2023

Spanish soldier and California explorer Pedro Fages was chasing deserters in 1772 when he came across a vast marshy lake and named it Los Tules for the reeds and rushes that lined its shore.

Situated between the later cities of Fresno and Bakersfield, Tulare Lake, as it was named in English, was the nation’s largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. It spread out to as much as 1,000 square miles as snow in the Sierra melted each spring, feeding five rivers flowing into the lake.

Letters to the Editor

Champions

EDITOR:

Summary

Its abundance of fish and other wildlife supported several Native American tribes, who built boats from the lake’s reeds to gather its bounty.

When the snowmelt was particularly heavy, the lake rose high enough that a natural spillway would divert water into the San Joaquin River and thence to the Pacific Ocean through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay.

It was a fairly common phenomenon in the 19th century, but the last time it happened naturally was in 1878. With the arrival of the railroad, the region was becoming an agricultural center and farmers were diverting water from Tulare’s tributaries for irrigation.

As those diversions expanded in the 20th century, Tulare Lake gradually shrank and disappeared altogether after World War II, when Pine Flat Dam blocked the Kings River, its major tributary, and levees channeled natural flows.

Once dry, the lakebed became the site of immense cotton farms, principally those of the Boswell and Salyer families. However, every few decades nature would reassert itself, piling up so much snow in the Sierra that the dams and levees were unable to contain the Kings and other rivers and Tulare Lake would be recreated.

I personally witnessed one such recreation, in the spring of 1970, as editor of the Hanford Sentinel. The Kings River runo was so intense that Pine Flat Dam came within a few feet of being overtopped. I visited the dam during that period to report on what was happening and was taken inside the

■ See WALTERS, page A5

Guest Column

Champions don’t feel like champions because they win. They feel like champions because they held their ground during the storms, the humility, the struggle and the disappointment. They didn’t let life push them around. They held out. With constant pressure, they held firm. When the odds looked grim, they began to push even harder.

True empowerment is walking through the struggles, pain and adversity with a smile on your face. It’s knowing that no matter what life throws at you, you will keep walking forward. You will stay in the storm with both feet planted. That no matter how much it hurts, you will keep your feet planted. It’s about being an unshakable warrior.

Just remember, winning comes from continuing to fight the losing battle. Sometimes you have to show the world what you are made of. The best feeling in the whole wide world is knowing that you are unshakable. Walk into every room knowing that no one can damage you. Now, show me how you live your life.

RILEY SMITH El Dorado Hills

Navigation center facts

EDITOR:

The El Dorado County Republican Central Committee, through the leadership Chair Todd White, continues to assassinate character and spew lies about the referral-only navigation center. This does our community a great disservice.

In his letter to the editor, White once again alleged the unanimous action of the Board of Supervisors to open the referral-only center at the old juvenile hall site was to “move some of the homeless away from (my) family’s properties on Broadway.” As you may remember, the BOS was in final deliberation about how we were going to address homelessness in El Dorado County when I was slapped with an anonymous complaint to the Fair Political Practices Commission alleging a conflict of interest. It delayed our action for several months as I answered those fraudulent allegations with the FPPC and awaited its ruling.

After a thorough review of the facts, the FPPC threw out the anonymous complaint as baseless and gave me the green light to act. The EDC Republican Central Committee is fully aware of this outcome, yet members throw out those baseless allegations again to whip up fear and discontent while continuing to impugn my reputation.

The navigation center was always meant to be a solution to illegal encampments, not to solve other housing challenges in our county. Not only have encampments become places not meant for human habitation, they pose extreme fire risks. Broadway was targeted first because it was the largest camp on the West Slope, with more than 70 people living in squalor. The Broadway camp was also identified as part of a larger, statewide operation to remove homeless encampments from state-owned properties near highways. On Feb. 27 the Broadway camp was one of 1,200 camps in California eradicated and cleaned up because it was causing damage to Highway 50 and was unsafe for the unsheltered residents. Thankfully, El Dorado County had a shelter option available and our dedicated Health and Human Services sta , the EDC Sheri ’s Homeless Outreach Team and the Placerville Police Department worked hand-in-hand to properly notify the unhoused campers and refer them into the navigation center.

As extreme weather and snow pummel our county, I remain extremely grateful we have an option for the unhoused.

As to how the Navigation Center is going, it has only been open a month and will certainly continue to evolve. As of Feb. 28, we had 41 guests, five dogs and two cats at the shelter. As far as reports of overdoses or incidents, they will happen. They have been happening all around us, they just haven’t been visible. Fortunately, we can get a better handle on it and address issues as they come because we have supportive services in place.

As for success stories, two men have enrolled in Marshall Hospital’s CARES program for substance abuse, several guests are working on their documentation which is critical for self-su ciency and another guest applied for CalFresh, Medi-Cal and has secured employment. None of that would have happened if they were living in an illegal camp.