The San Joaquin River (; es, Río San Joaquín) is the longest river of
Central California
Central California is generally thought of as the middle third of the state, north of Southern California, which includes Los Angeles, and south of Northern California, which includes San Francisco. It includes the northern portion of the San J ...
. The long river starts in the high
Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...
, and flows through the rich
agricultural
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...
region of the northern
San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven c ...
before reaching
Suisun Bay
Suisun Bay ( ; Wintun for "where the west wind blows") is a shallow tidal estuary (a northeastern extension of the San Francisco Bay) in Northern California. It lies at the confluence of the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River, forming the ent ...
,
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...
, and the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
. An important source of
irrigation
Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow Crop, crops, Landscape plant, landscape plants, and Lawn, lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,00 ...
water as well as a
wildlife corridor
A wildlife corridor, habitat corridor, or green corridor is an area of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities or structures (such as roads, development, or logging). This allows an exchange of individuals between ...
, the San Joaquin is among the most heavily
dam
A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use ...
med and diverted of California's rivers.
People have inhabited the San Joaquin Valley for more than 8,000 years, and it was long one of the major population centers of pre-Columbian California. Starting in the late 18th century, successive waves of explorers then settlers, mainly
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
and
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
, emigrated to the San Joaquin basin. When Spain colonized the area, they sent soldiers from Mexico, who were usually of mixed native Mexican and Spanish birth, led by Spanish officers. Franciscan missionaries from Spain came with the expeditions to evangelize the natives by teaching them about the Catholic faith. Baptized natives (called conversos or neophytes) moved to missions after they accepted the faith and they were baptized. The small numbers of missionaries managed the large numbers of natives in the vast mission lands, taught them how to ranch, farm, build, and weave, with the goal of handing the mission lands over to the conversos when they were ready. The missionaries lived very simply and took measures to protect the Native Americans from exploitation by the Spanish soldiers.
After the
Mexican revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
, the Mexican government secularized the missions, and the conversos were left undefended and were exploited by Mexican settlers and later floods of settlers from the newly formed United States. The natives were evicted and tricked out of the mission lands that were due them.
Because of the uniform topography of the San Joaquin Valley, floods once transformed much of the lower river into a huge
inland sea
An inland sea (also known as an epeiric sea or an epicontinental sea) is a continental body of water which is very large and is either completely surrounded by dry land or connected to an ocean by a river, strait, or "arm of the sea". An inland se ...
. In the 20th century, many
levee
A levee (), dike (American English), dyke (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure that is usually soil, earthen and that often runs parallel (geometry), parallel to ...
s and dams were built on the San Joaquin and all of its major tributaries. These engineering works changed the fluctuating nature of the river forever, and cut off the
Tulare Basin from the rest of the San Joaquin watershed. Once habitat for hundreds of thousands of spawning
salmon
Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...
and millions of migratory birds, today the river is subject to tremendous water-supply, navigation and regulation works by various federal agencies, which have dramatically reduced the flow of the river since the 20th century.
Name
The river was called many different names; at times different parts of the river were known by different names. The present name of the river dates to 1805–1808, when
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
explorer
Gabriel Moraga
Gabriel Moraga (1765 – June 14, 1823) was a Sonoran-born Californio explorer and army officer. He was the son of the expeditionary José Joaquín Moraga who helped lead the de Anza Expedition to California in 1774, Like his father, Moraga is on ...
was surveying east from
Mission San José Mission San José may refer to:
*Mission San José (California), a Spanish mission in Fremont, California
* Mission San Jose, Fremont, California, a neighborhood
* Mission San Jose High School, a high school in Fremont, California
*Mission San José ...
in order to find possible sites for a
mission
Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to:
Organised activities Religion
*Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity
*Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...
. Moraga named a tributary of the river (it is not known which one) for
Saint Joachim
Joachim (; ''Yəhōyāqīm'', "he whom Yahweh has set up"; ; ) was, according to Christian tradition, the husband of Saint Anne and the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The story of Joachim and Anne first appears in the Biblical apocryphal ...
, husband of
Saint Anne
According to Christian apocryphal and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come o ...
and father of
Mary, the mother of Jesus
Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jews, Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Jose ...
. The name Moraga chose was later applied to the entire river; it was in common use by 1810.
In 1827,
Jedediah Smith
Jedediah Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was an American clerk, transcontinental pioneer, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the Western United States, and ...
wrote in his journal that an unknown group of Native Americans called the river the ''Peticutry'', a name which is listed as an official variant in the
U.S. Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and ...
(USGS)
Geographic Names Information System
The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...
.
In the
Mono language, the river is called ''typici h huu, which means "important or great river."
An earlier name for the lower section of the San Joaquin was ''Rio de San Francisco'', which was the name
Father Juan Crespí gave to the river he could see entering the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from the south. A member of the
Pedro Fages
Pedro Fages (1734–1794) was a Spanish soldier, explorer, first Lieutenant Governor of the Californias under Gaspar de Portolá. Fages claimed the governorship after Portolá's death, acting as governor in opposition to the official governor ...
party in 1772, Crespi's vantage point was the hilltops behind modern Antioch. Another early name was ''Rio San Juan Bautista'', the origin of which is unknown.
Course
![San Joaquin River Viaduct aerial 2016](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/San_Joaquin_River_Viaduct_aerial_2016.jpg)
The river's source is located in the
Ansel Adams Wilderness
The Ansel Adams Wilderness is a wilderness area in the Sierra Nevada of California, United States. The wilderness spans ; 33.9% of the territory lies in the Inyo National Forest, 65.8% is in the Sierra National Forest, and the remaining 0.3% cove ...
, in the south-central Sierra Nevada at the confluence of three major affluents: the Middle Fork, which rises from
Thousand Island Lake at almost above sea level,
[ meets the North Fork, which starts southeast of Mount Lyell, and the South Fork, which begins at Martha Lake in ]Kings Canyon National Park
Kings Canyon National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada, in Fresno and Tulare Counties, California. Originally established in 1890 as General Grant National Park, the park was greatly expanded and renamed to Kings ...
and flows through Florence Lake
Florence Lake (born Florence Silverlake, November 27, 1904 – April 11, 1980) was an American actress best known as the leading lady in most of the Edgar Kennedy comedy shorts.
Early life
Lake was born in Charleston, South Carolina. In t ...
, joins a short distance downstream. The Middle Fork is considered the largest of the 3 forks. From the mountainous alpine headwaters
The headwaters of a river or stream is the farthest place in that river or stream from its estuary or downstream confluence with another river, as measured along the course of the river. It is also known as a river's source.
Definition
The ...
, the San Joaquin flows generally south into the foothills
Foothills or piedmont are geographically defined as gradual increases in elevation at the base of a mountain range, higher hill range or an upland area. They are a transition zone between plains and low relief hills and the adjacent topograp ...
of the Sierra, passing through four hydroelectric dams
Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined an ...
. It eventually emerges from the foothills at what was once the town of Millerton, the location of Friant Dam since 1942, which forms Millerton Lake.
Below Friant Dam (RM267), the San Joaquin flows west-southwest out into the San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven c ...
– the southern part of the Great Central Valley
The Central Valley is a broad, elongated, flat valley that dominates the interior of California. It is wide and runs approximately from north-northwest to south-southeast, inland from and parallel to the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Coastal Califor ...
– passing north of Fresno
Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...
. With most of its water diverted into aqueducts, the river frequently runs dry in a 150-mile section. This lack of riverwater begins in the between Friant Dam and Mendota, where it is only replenished by the Delta-Mendota Canal (RM 205) and the Fresno Slough, when the Kings River is flooding. From Mendota, the San Joaquin swings northwest, passing through many different channels, some natural and some man-made. Northeast of Dos Palos
Dos Palos (Spanish for "Two Timbers") is a city in Merced County, California, United States. Dos Palos is located south-southwest of Merced, the county seat, at an elevation of . The population was 5,798 at the 2020 census, up from 4,950 at the ...
, it is only joined by the Fresno
Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...
and Chowchilla River
The Chowchilla River is a river in central California, United States and a minor tributary of the San Joaquin River. It flows for from the western side of the Sierra Nevada Range to the San Joaquin River system in the San Joaquin Valley.
Most of ...
s when they reach flood stage. Fifty miles (80 km) downstream, the Merced River
The Merced River (), in the central part of the U.S. state of California, is a -long tributary of the San Joaquin River flowing from the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada into the San Joaquin Valley. It is most well known for its swift and st ...
empties into an otherwise dry San Joaquin (RM118).
The majority of the river flows through quiet agricultural bottom lands, and as a result its meandering course manages to avoid most of the urban areas and cities in the San Joaquin Valley. About west of Modesto
Modesto () is the county seat and largest city of Stanislaus County, California, United States. With a population of 218,464 at the 2020 census, it is the 19th largest city in the state of California and forms part of the Sacramento-Stockton ...
, the San Joaquin meets its largest tributary, the Tuolumne. Near Vernalis, it is joined by another major tributary, the Stanislaus River
The Stanislaus River is a tributary of the San Joaquin River in north-central California in the United States. The main stem of the river is long, and measured to its furthest headwaters it is about long. Originating as three forks in the high ...
. The river passes between Manteca and Tracy, where a pair of distributaries
A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Distributaries are a common feature of river deltas. The phenomenon is known as river bifurcation. The opposite of a distributary ...
– the Old River and Middle River – split off from the main stem just above the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a huge inverted river delta {{noref, date=July 2008
An inverted river delta is special category of river delta in which the narrow end of the delta emerges on the seafront and the wide end is located further inland, so that with respect to the seafront, the locations of both ...
formed by sediment deposits of the Sacramento
)
, image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg
, mapsize = 250x200px
, map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
and San Joaquin Rivers.
About from the mouth, the river draws abreast to the western flank of Stockton, one of the basin's largest cities. From here to the mouth, the river is dredge
Dredging is the excavation of material from a water environment. Possible reasons for dredging include improving existing water features; reshaping land and water features to alter drainage, navigability, and commercial use; constructing da ...
d as part of a navigation project, the Stockton Deep Water Ship Channel. Past the head of tide
Head of tide, tidal limit or tidehead is the farthest point upstream where a river is affected by tidal fluctuations, or where the fluctuations are less than a certain amount. This applies to rivers which flow into tidal bodies such as oceans, ...
, amid the many islands of the delta, the San Joaquin is joined by two more tributaries: the Calaveras River
The Calaveras River is a river in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
It flows roughly southwest for from the confluence of its north and south forks in Calaveras County to its confluence with the San Joaquin River in the city of Stockt ...
and the larger Mokelumne. The river grows to almost wide before ending at its confluence with the Sacramento River, in Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes (; grc-gre, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου, ''Antiókheia hē epì Oróntou'', Learned ; also Syrian Antioch) grc-koi, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου; or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπ ...
, forming the head of Suisun Bay
Suisun Bay ( ; Wintun for "where the west wind blows") is a shallow tidal estuary (a northeastern extension of the San Francisco Bay) in Northern California. It lies at the confluence of the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River, forming the ent ...
. The combined waters from the two rivers then flow west through the Carquinez Strait
The Carquinez Strait (; Spanish: ''Estrecho de Carquinez'') is a narrow tidal strait in Northern California. It is part of the tidal estuary of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers as they drain into the San Francisco Bay. The strait is lo ...
and San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...
into the Pacific.
Discharge
The natural annual discharge of the San Joaquin before agricultural development is believed to have been between 6–7.9 million acre feet
The acre-foot is a non- SI unit of volume equal to about commonly used in the United States in reference to large-scale water resources, such as reservoirs, aqueducts, canals, sewer flow capacity, irrigation water, and river flows.
An acre-f ...
(7.4–9.7 million m3), equaling a flow of roughly . Some early estimates even range as high as 14 million acre-feet (17.3 million m3), or more than . The numerous tributaries of the San Joaquin – the Fresno, Chowchilla, Merced, Tuolumne, Mariposa Creek, Calaveras, Mokelumne, and others – flowed freely across alluvial flood plains to join the river. All of the major tributaries of the river originate in the Sierra Nevada; most of the streams that start in the Coast Range are intermittent, and contribute little to the flow of the San Joaquin. During the winter, spring, and early summer, storms and snowmelt swell the river; in 1914 – before the development of major dams and irrigation diversions – the California Department of Engineering estimated the river's flow in full flood at . In late summer and autumn, there is little water left over to replenish stream flow. Historically, groundwater seepage from Tulare Lake maintained a significant base flow in the river during the dry months – some accounts suggest over 50 percent.
The present conditions of the San Joaquin River at Friant Dam, the average discharge was , or 0.234 million acre-feet per year. The highest average discharge between 1941 and 2015 was in 1983 when the discharge was , with an average of those years of . The water temperature range from 7° Celsius (44.5 °F) in February 2006 to a high of 22.8 °C (73.3 °F) on Oct 4, 2014. This range is less extreme than the temperatures below Vernalis where the range is from 2° Celsius (35.6 °F)on Dec 26, 1987 to 35.5 °C (95.9 °F) on August 9, 1990. The river typically ends above the Mendota Pool. Larger flows in the fall may make it possible for the river to extend further towards the ocean, but for the last several years, this is a rare occurrence. The water is largely held behind Friant Dam.
The typical monthly flow of the San Joaquin River near the Sack Dam is 0. There have been seepage concerns below this part of the river, so current flows are restricted below the Sack Dam.
The present annual flow of the San Joaquin River near Vernalis is about , or 4.5 million acre-feet (5.6 million m3) per year. According to USGS stream gauge
A stream gauge, streamgage or stream gauging station is a location used by hydrologists or environmental scientists to monitor and test terrestrial bodies of water. Hydrometric measurements of water level surface elevation ("stage") and/or volu ...
#11303500 at Vernalis, above Suisun Bay and below the mouth of the Stanislaus River, the average discharge of the San Joaquin River between 1924 and 2011 was , or 3.3 million acre-feet (4.0 million m3) per year. The highest recorded annual mean was , 15.4 million acre-feet (19.0 million m3), in 1983, while the lowest was , , in 1977. The maximum peak flow occurred on December 9, 1950, at , and a low flow of was recorded on August 10, 1961.
San Joaquin River monthly discharges at Vernalis
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Geology
In a geologic context, the San Joaquin River can be divided into two major segments. The upper above Friant Dam in the Sierra is characterized as a steep-gradient, rocky mountain stream. Over millions of years, the upper San Joaquin, as well as the upper reaches of most of its tributaries, have eroded enormous amounts of rock and sediment from the mountains. Most of the Sierras are underlain by granitic igneous
Igneous rock (derived from the Latin word ''ignis'' meaning fire), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or ...
and metamorphic rock
Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock (protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, causin ...
dating back to the Mesozoic Era
The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last Era (geology), era of Earth's Geologic time scale, geological history, lasting from about , comprising ...
(250-66 MYA); in addition many of the San Joaquin's tributaries flow across a foothills region of metamorphosed volcanic rock more famously known as the Mother Lode Gold Belt.
The lower part of the river, in sharp contrast, is a meandering stream flowing over Cenozoic
The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...
alluvial deposits
Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluv ...
(66 MYA-present), which together comprise the flat floor of the Central Valley. The tremendous volume of sediments that underlie the lower San Joaquin River ranges from deep, with distance to bedrock
In geology, bedrock is solid Rock (geology), rock that lies under loose material (regolith) within the crust (geology), crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet.
Definition
Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface mater ...
generally increasing in a northerly direction. Prior to the uplift of the California Coast Ranges
The Coast Ranges of California span from Del Norte or Humboldt County, California, south to Santa Barbara County. The other three coastal California mountain ranges are the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges and the Klamath Mountains.
P ...
, more than of sediments were deposited at the foot of the Sierras by tidal activity, and the ancestral San Joaquin and its tributaries flowed west over this alluvial plain to the sea, dumping their own sediments onto the marine deposits. Compressional forces along the boundary of the North American
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Ca ...
and Pacific Plate
The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate.
The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and Iza ...
s between 2-4 MYA resulted in the uplift of the Coast Ranges, creating an enclosed basin today known as the Central Valley and resulted in the San Joaquin's present path to the sea.
Because of its highly permeable nature, the San Joaquin River's valley is underlain by one of the largest aquifer
An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characterist ...
s in the Western United States
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the Wes ...
. The aquifer underlying the San Joaquin River and Tulare Basin is estimated to hold nearly of water, of which about half can be pumped economically or is clean enough for human use. The aquifer receives in excess of of inflow per year, mostly from precipitation
In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravitational pull from clouds. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. ...
and irrigation water seepage. Concentration of chloride
The chloride ion is the anion (negatively charged ion) Cl−. It is formed when the element chlorine (a halogen) gains an electron or when a compound such as hydrogen chloride is dissolved in water or other polar solvents. Chloride salts ...
and other minerals generally increases from east to west across the basin.
History
Indigenous people
Archaeological finds near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley suggested that humans first arrived in the region as early as 12,000 but no later than 5,000 years ago. The two major ethnic groups were the Miwok
The Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) are members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now Northern California, who traditionally spoke one of the Miwok languages in the Utian family. The word ' ...
people, who inhabited the northern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region, and the Yokuts
The Yokuts (previously known as MariposasPowell, 1891:90–91.) are an ethnic group of Native Americans native to central California. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. ''Yokuts ...
tribes, scattered around the more arid southern portion of the basin. During these pre-European times, the San Joaquin River flowed through rich grasslands and sprawling marshes, flooding every few years and transforming much of the valley into lakes. At the southern end of the valley lay the vast Tulare Lake
Tulare Lake () (Spanish: ''Laguna de Tache'', Yokuts: ''Pah-áh-su'') is a freshwater dry lake with residual wetlands and marshes in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. After Lake Cahuilla disappeared in the 17th century ...
, formerly the largest freshwater lake in the western United States, which connected with the San Joaquin through a series of marshes and sloughs. The rich vegetation and wildlife surrounding these bodies of water made the San Joaquin Valley a favored home as well as a stopping-off place for other nomadic peoples. The native people, mostly hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
s, lived off this land of abundance; during the 18th century, the population of the San Joaquin Valley was estimated at more than 69,000, representing one of the greatest concentrations of native people anywhere in North America.
The Yokuts, who comprised most of the indigenous people in the San Joaquin basin, mostly lived in the foothill area of the Sierra along streams, with their territory stretching south from the Chowchilla River
The Chowchilla River is a river in central California, United States and a minor tributary of the San Joaquin River. It flows for from the western side of the Sierra Nevada Range to the San Joaquin River system in the San Joaquin Valley.
Most of ...
to the Kern River
The Kern River, previously Rio de San Felipe, later La Porciuncula, is an Endangered, Wild and Scenic river in the U.S. state of California, approximately long. It drains an area of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains northeast of Bakersfiel ...
. Certain areas above the foothills were occupied by the Chumash Chumash may refer to:
*Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism
*Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California
*Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California
See also
*Chumash traditional n ...
and visited by Paiute people
Paiute (; also Piute) refers to three non-contiguous groups of indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Although their languages are related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, these three groups do not form a single set. The term "Paiu ...
s of the Great Basin for trade. The marshy areas to the west were inhabited by various nomadic groups, and probably had fewer permanent residents although it was a favored fishing and hunting area. In contrast, the Miwok occupied land deeper within the Sierra Nevada stretching north from the Merced River to the Mokelumne or the American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
, a tributary of the Sacramento, and west to the Delta region. Most of the Miwok people in the watershed were part of the appropriately named Sierra Miwok
The Plains and Sierra Miwok were once the largest group of California Indian Miwok people, indigenous to California. Their homeland included regions of the Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, and the Sierra Nevada.
Geography
The Plains and ...
group.
A majority of the people along the San Joaquin River and its tributaries lived in small bands or tribes, which had no distinguishing names. Villages were small and usually the size of camps, rarely numbering more than a few hundred inhabitants. The Miwok, for example, rarely traveled more than a few miles from their home villages, and as such the inhabitants of one village would not know much of the surrounding country beyond the neighboring villages. The staple food for San Joaquin Valley inhabitants was the acorn
The acorn, or oaknut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'' and '' Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains one seed (occasionally
two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne ...
, which when ground, could be made into various foods such as cakes. Grinding the acorns was a simple process where they crushed the nuts using rocks in natural granite depressions. Many of the surviving examples of acorn milling areas can still be found in the foothills, especially around the 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, ...
area.
Spanish and Mexican influence
The first recorded non-indigenous person to see the San Joaquin River was Don Pedro Fages in 1772. Fages, accompanied by Father Juan Crespí, reached Mount Diablo
Mount Diablo is a mountain of the Diablo Range, in Contra Costa County, California, Contra Costa County of the eastern San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. It is south of Clayton, California, Clayton and northeast of Danville, Califo ...
near Suisun Bay on March 30 and there gazed upon the merging courses of the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Mokelumne Rivers. Another narrative does not mention Fages' name, but does say that Crespí was the one who reached Suisun Bay in 1772. During this visit, Crespí called the San Joaquin River "El Rio de San Francisco", a name that was not used widely due to the river's remoteness but persisted until the early 19th century.
In the autumn of 1772 Fages set out from Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa
Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa ( es, Misión San Luis Obispo de Tolosa) is a Spanish mission founded September 1, 1772 by Father Junípero Serra in San Luis Obispo, California. Named after Saint Louis of Anjou, the bishop of Toulouse, the ...
in pursuit of deserters from the Spanish army, and traveled east then north over the Tehachapi Mountains
The Tehachapi Mountains (; Kawaiisu: ''Tihachipia'', meaning "hard climb") are a mountain range in the Transverse Ranges system of California in the Western United States. The range extends for approximately in southern Kern County and northwest ...
through Tejón Pass, which today carries Interstate 5
Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Califor ...
into the San Joaquin valley. After crossing the mountains, he came upon the shore of Buena Vista Lake at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, and gave the name ''Buena Vista'' ("beautiful view") to the pass and a nearby Native American village. However, Fages did not venture farther north, and thus did not further explore the main stem of the San Joaquin River.
The San Joaquin River region remained largely unknown except for the fact of its existence until 1806, when Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga led the first of several subsequent expeditions into the Central Valley, in order to find potential mission sites. Moraga started out from Mission San Juan Bautista
Mission San Juan Bautista is a Spanish mission in San Juan Bautista, San Benito County, California. Founded on June 24, 1797 by Fermín Lasuén of the Franciscan order, the mission was the fifteenth of the Spanish missions established in presen ...
, in present-day San Benito County
San Benito County (; ''San Benito'', Spanish for "St. Benedict"), officially the County of San Benito, is a county located in the Coast Range Mountains of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 64,209. The coun ...
, on September 21 of that year and traveled east into the San Joaquin Valley. The group skirted the western foothills of the Sierra and christened many place names that remain in use today. In 1807 and 1808, Moraga set out again to the San Joaquin Valley. It was during one of these expeditions that he gave the river its present name, after St. Joachim. He also gave names to many tributaries of the river, such as the Merced River (''El Río de Nuestra Señora de Merced'', "River of our Lady of Mercy").
Relations between the Spanish and the Native Americans in the earlier expeditions to the valley were initially friendly, and the indigenous people began to grow accustomed to the Spanish that later came to the San Joaquin River region. As early as the 1807 Moraga expedition, it was reported that some natives were hostile and attempting to steal their horses. Indeed, when the natives began to rustle cattle and horses for food, the Spanish retaliated by burning camps and villages. Such conflict created enormous cultural loss, and violence continually escalated between the two sides, with no apparent end in sight.
California became part of Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
in 1821. The new government secularized the Spanish missions and as a result the conversos in the missions were no longer protected by the missionaries from exploitation. The Mexican government began to tax the missions excessively. From 1820, El Camino Viejo
El Camino Viejo a Los Ángeles ( en, the Old Road to Los Angeles), also known as El Camino Viejo and the Old Los Angeles Trail, was the oldest north-south trail in the interior of Spanish colonial Las Californias (1769–1822) and Mexican Alta Cal ...
a route between Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
and San Francisco Bay along the west side the San Joaquin Valley began, which brought settlements from the United States into the valley. During Mexican rule, the mission lands in the San Joaquin Valley were subdivided to wealthy landowners (''rancheros''. The mission lands that were supposed to be given to the natives were also fraudulently taken over by American settlers. A famous leader of the natives was the Yokuts Estanislao
Cucunuchi ( – 1838), baptized as Estanislao, was an indigenous ''alcalde'' of Mission San José and a member and leader of the Lakisamni tribe of the Yokuts people of northern California. He is famous for leading bands of armed Native America ...
, who led revolts against the Mexicans in the late 1820s until finally defeated in 1829 on the Stanislaus River
The Stanislaus River is a tributary of the San Joaquin River in north-central California in the United States. The main stem of the river is long, and measured to its furthest headwaters it is about long. Originating as three forks in the high ...
, which bears his name today.
Early American era
The first American known to see the San Joaquin River was likely Jedediah Smith
Jedediah Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was an American clerk, transcontinental pioneer, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the Western United States, and ...
, a renowned mountain man
A mountain man is an explorer who lives in the wilderness. Mountain men were most common in the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through to the 1880s (with a peak population in the early 1840s). They were instrumental in opening up ...
, fur trapper
Fur is a thick growth of hair that covers the skin of mammals. It consists of a combination of oily guard hair on top and thick underfur beneath. The guard hair keeps moisture from reaching the skin; the underfur acts as an insulating blanket ...
and explorer. In 1826, Smith arrived in Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel ( es, Misión de San Gabriel Arcángel) is a Californian mission and historic landmark in San Gabriel, California. It was founded by Spaniards of the Franciscan order on "The Feast of the Birth of Mary," September ...
, California, when the region was under control of the Mexican government. As this was in violation of a law which prevented foreigners from entering California, and he could have been arrested for spying, he traveled north into the San Joaquin Valley, searching for populations of beaver
Beavers are large, semiaquatic rodents in the genus ''Castor'' native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. There are two extant species: the North American beaver (''Castor canadensis'') and the Eurasian beaver (''C. fiber''). Beavers ar ...
. Smith noted the fertility and natural beauty of the area, and the apparent peace of the Native Americans living in the villages he passed. His expedition then turned east in an attempt to cross the Sierra Nevada. They tried to summit the range by way of both the Kings River and the American River
, name_etymology =
, image = American River CA.jpg
, image_size = 300
, image_caption = The American River at Folsom
, map = Americanrivermap.png
, map_size = 300
, map_caption ...
(a tributary of the Sacramento), but it was early spring and the snow was too deep. Finally, they crossed the mountains along the Stanislaus River
The Stanislaus River is a tributary of the San Joaquin River in north-central California in the United States. The main stem of the river is long, and measured to its furthest headwaters it is about long. Originating as three forks in the high ...
canyon, becoming the first recorded whites to cross the Sierra Nevada on foot. It is still disputed over whether Smith's party discovered gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...
on the San Joaquin or one of its tributaries. Although some of his men confirmed it, Smith did not make any mention of the precious metal in his journal.
In the early 1830s, a few fur trappers from the Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...
exploring southwards into the San Joaquin Valley arrived just in time to be greeted with a sight of horror. An epidemic of smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...
and malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...
brought unintentionally by the Europeans had swept down the San Joaquin River corridor during the summer of 1833, killing in a single stroke between 50 and 75 percent of the entire native population in the valley. The outbreak did not vanish; it continued year after year with diminishing acuteness until about 50,000–60,000 indigenous people lay dead. Explorer Kit Carson
Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman. He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime by biographies and n ...
noted in 1839 that "... cholera or some other fearful scourge broke out among them and raged with such fearful fatality that they were unable either to bury or burn their dead, and the air was filled with the stench of their decaying bodies."
During the time Mexico was in control of California, the San Joaquin River region was only sparsely populated, and used almost exclusively for cattle ranching
A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most often ...
. However, when California won independence from Mexico in 1846, becoming part of the United States the following month, a flood of American settlers descended upon the valley. Just a year before, Benjamin Davis Wilson
Benjamin Davis Wilson (December 1, 1811 – March 11, 1878), commonly known as Don Benito Wilson,Excerpt: ''"Wilson, now known as Don Benito, became a Californio – that group of Mexicans and Angols who thought of themselves as Californians rathe ...
"drove a herd of cattle from his Riverside rancho through the San Joaquin Valley to Stockton and reported seeing not a single white man". But after the Americans took over, emigrants began trickling in increased numbers, establishing the towns of Kingston City
Kingston City was a federal electoral district represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1925 to 1953. It was located in the province of Ontario. This riding was created in 1924 from parts of Kingston riding.
It consisted of the cit ...
, Millerton, and Fresno City. The newcomers also included a group of Mormon
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...
s led by Samuel Brannan
Samuel Brannan (March 2, 1819 – May 5, 1889) was an American settler, businessman, journalist, and prominent Mormon who founded the '' California Star'', the first newspaper in San Francisco, California. He is considered the first to publici ...
who established a settlement at the confluence of the San Joaquin and the Stanislaus, called New Hope or San Joaquin City.
The real influx came in 1848, when a gold strike on the American set off the California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...
. Within one year, the population of the San Joaquin Valley increased by more than 80,000. The city of Stockton, on the lower San Joaquin, quickly grew from a sleepy backwater to a thriving trading center, the stopping-off point for miners headed to the gold fields in the foothills of the Sierra. Rough ways such as the Millerton Road which later became the Stockton - Los Angeles Road Stockton may refer to:
Places Australia
* Stockton, New South Wales
* Stockton, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region
New Zealand
* Stockton, New Zealand
United Kingdom
*Stockton, Cheshire
*Stockton, Norfolk
*Stockton, Chir ...
quickly extended the length of the valley, some following old cattle routes and Native American trails, and were served by mule teams and covered wagons. Riverboat
A riverboat is a watercraft designed for inland navigation on lakes, rivers, and artificial waterways. They are generally equipped and outfitted as work boats in one of the carrying trades, for freight or people transport, including luxury un ...
navigation quickly became an important transportation link on the San Joaquin River, and during the "June Rise", as boat operators called the San Joaquin's annual high water levels during snowmelt, large craft could make it as far upstream as Fresno. During the peak years of the gold rush, the river in the Stockton area was reportedly crowded with hundreds of abandoned oceangoing craft, whose crew had deserted for the gold fields. The multitude of idle ships was such a blockade that at several occasions they were burned just to clear a way for riverboat traffic.
Irrigation era
Although the gold rush attracted tens of thousands of newcomers to the San Joaquin River area, deposits of the precious mineral petered out within a few years, especially on the upper reaches of the San Joaquin and its tributaries which were only suitable for placer mining
Placer mining () is the mining of stream bed (Alluvium, alluvial) deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit mining, open-pit (also called open-cast mining) or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment.
Placer minin ...
. Many of these people settled in the San Joaquin Valley, most in the existing towns such as Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield but some establishing new settlements. These included San Joaquin City, near the confluence of the San Joaquin with the Stanislaus, probably the largest of these post-gold-rush boomtowns. Established in 1851, the town maintained considerable size until 1880, when trade competition from nearby Stockton caused it to diminish. Another notable but much smaller settlement was Las Juntas, near present-day Mendota. This was a haven for criminals and fugitives, and was frequented by the infamous bandits Joaquín Murrieta
Joaquin Murrieta Carrillo (sometimes spelled Murieta or Murietta) (1829 – July 25, 1853), also called the Robin Hood of the West or the Robin Hood of El Dorado, was a Mexican-American figure of disputed historicity. The novel '' The Life and A ...
and Tiburcio Vásquez
Tiburcio Vásquez (April 11, 1835 – March 19, 1875) was a Californio ''bandido'' who was active in California from 1854 to 1874. The Vasquez Rocks, north of Los Angeles, were one of his many hideouts and are named after him.
Early life
T ...
.
It was in the mid-1860s that the San Joaquin River and its surrounds underwent the greatest change they had seen in human history: the introduction of irrigated agriculture. As early as 1863, small irrigation canals were built in the Centerville area, southeast of Fresno, but were destroyed in subsequent floods. The vulnerability of the small local infrastructure led to the establishment of irrigation district In the United States an irrigation district is a cooperative, self-governing public corporation set up as a subdivision of the State government, with definite geographic boundaries, organized, and having taxing power to obtain and distribute water f ...
s, which were formed to construct and maintain canals in certain areas of the valley. One of the first was the Robla Canal Company in the Merced River area, which went into operation in March 1876, but was soon surpassed by the Farmers Canal Company. The district built a diversion dam on the Merced, sending its water into a pair of canals still in use today.
One of the most powerful early irrigation empires was the Kern County Land and Water Company, established in 1873 by land speculator
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.)
Many s ...
James Ben Ali Haggin, which grew to supply over through their canal system. However, Haggin soon ran into conflicts with other landowners over riparian water rights
Riparian water rights (or simply riparian rights) is a system for allocating water among those who possess land along its path. It has its origins in English common law. Riparian water rights exist in many jurisdictions with a common law herit ...
, as the larger districts, including his, had more financial reserves and engineering expertise, and were the first to build dams and diversions on a large scale. This resulted in the drying out of streams and rivers before they reached downstream users and sparked conflict over how much water could be allotted to whom. In Haggin's case, his company ran into problems with the Miller & Lux Corporation, run by Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical ref ...
and Charles Lux, who owned more than throughout the San Joaquin Valley, Tulare Basin, and other regions of California. The court battle that resulted would change water laws and rights in the San Joaquin River valley forever, and ended up promoting large-scale agribusiness over small farmers.
Miller and Lux were not any newer to the San Joaquin Valley than had been Haggin, but were the driving influence on valley agribusiness until well into the early 20th century. The corporation had begun acquiring land in the valley in 1858, eventually holding sway over an enormous swath reaching from the Kern River in the south to the Chowchilla River in the north. Much of the land that Miller and Lux acquired was swamp and marsh, which was considered virtually worthless. However, with their huge capital, they could afford to drain thousands of acres of it, beginning an enormous environmental change that eventually resulted in the loss of over 95 percent of the wetlands adjoining the San Joaquin River and Tulare Basin.
Henry Miller exercised enormous political power in the state, and most San Joaquin Valley inhabitants either were avid supporters of him or despised him. When Miller died in 1916, his company owned in the San Joaquin Valley alone with hundreds of miles of well-developed, maintained irrigation canals. As said by Tom Mott, the son of Miller and Lux' irrigation superintendent, "Miller realized you couldn't do anything with the land unless you had the water to go with it. Perhaps more than any other person, Miller had more of a lasting impact on the San Joaquin River than any other individual."
By the early 20th century, so much water was being diverted off the San Joaquin River and its tributaries that the river was no longer suitable for navigational purposes. As a result, commercial navigation began a decline starting in the late 19th century and was completely gone by 1911. With over under irrigation along the river by 1900 – this figure has only grown hugely since then – the river and its tributaries became much narrower, siltier and shallower, with large consequences for the natural environment, for sustainability of water supplies in its valley, and also huge changes for water politics in the state. The San Joaquin and its tributaries seemed to give rise to just about every single possible argument over water, including such cases as "When is a river not a river?" referring to the difference between a slough
Slough () is a town and unparished area in the unitary authority of the same name in Berkshire, England, bordering west London. It lies in the Thames Valley, west of central London and north-east of Reading, at the intersection of the M4 ...
and a marsh. It has been said that fights over the river have caused "some of the most bitter and longest running lawsuits ever to clog the courts. Arguably, it is the most litigated river in America."
Dams, diversions and engineering
Hydroelectric development in the early 1900s
By the early 20th century, Californian cities as far south as Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
were looking to new sources for electricity because of their rapidly growing populations and industries. Two visionaries, railroad
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...
baron Henry E. Huntington and engineer John S. Eastwood established a fledgling power company in 1902 today known as Southern California Edison
Southern California Edison (or SCE Corp), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of app ...
, and acquired water rights to the upper San Joaquin River from the Miller and Lux Corporation. During that year, Huntington and Eastwood devised plans to utilize the water of the San Joaquin River and some of its headwaters tributaries in what would become one of the most extensive hydroelectric
Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...
systems in the world, known as the Big Creek Hydroelectric Project
The Big Creek Hydroelectric Project is an extensive hydroelectric power scheme on the upper San Joaquin River system, in the Sierra Nevada of central California. The project is owned and operated by Southern California Edison (SCE). The use and reu ...
.
Construction of the system's facilities, which included Mammoth Pool and Redinger Dams on the San Joaquin and four additional reservoirs on its tributaries with a total storage capacity of , started in 1911. A total of eight dams and tunnels, the longest of which stretches , and nine powerhouses with a total installed capacity of 1,014 MW were built in stages spanning the 20th century, with the last powerhouse coming on line in 1987. The consistent use and reuse of the waters of the San Joaquin River, its South Fork, and the namesake of the project, Big Creek, over a vertical drop of , have over the years inspired a nickname, "The Hardest Working Water in the World".
Early 1900s hydroelectric development in the upper San Joaquin River basin was not limited to Southern California Edison. In 1910, the San Joaquin Electric Company built a dam on Willow Creek, a tributary of the San Joaquin River, forming Bass Lake as part of the Crane Valley hydroelectric project. Water from Bass Lake was diverted to a powerhouse on the San Joaquin River beginning in 1917, and two more powerhouses were added in 1919, increasing the total generating capacity to about 28 MW. The Crane Valley project and San Joaquin Electric was purchased by San Joaquin Light and Power Company in 1909, which was in turn purchased by Pacific Gas and Electric Company
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). The company is headquartered in the Pacific Gas & Electric Building, in San Francisco, California. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 milli ...
(PG&E) in 1936. In 1920, Kerckhoff Dam was completed on the San Joaquin River about southwest of Big Creek as part of PG&E's Kerckhoff hydroelectric project. The dam initially operated with a capacity of 38 MW in the Kerckhoff No. 1 Powerhouse on Millerton Lake. In 1983, the 155 MW Kerckhoff No. 2 Powerhouse was added, bringing the total capacity to 193 MW.
Stockton Ship Channel
The San Joaquin was once navigable by steamboats as far upstream as Fresno, but agricultural diversions have greatly slowed and shallowed the river. In addition, this has caused the river to drop large amounts of silt that formerly washed out to sea in its bed, further reducing the depth. In the late 19th century, the city of Stockton, once an important seaport
A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Ham ...
for the San Joaquin Valley, found itself increasingly landlocked because the San Joaquin River, its main connection to the sea, was rapidly silting up. The early 20th century saw proposals to maintain a minimum depth in the lower river by dredging
Dredging is the excavation of material from a water environment. Possible reasons for dredging include improving existing water features; reshaping land and water features to alter drainage, navigability, and commercial use; constructing da ...
, but these were interrupted by the onset of World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. In 1925 the city put forth a $1.3 million bond for dredging the lower San Joaquin from its mouth to the Port of Stockton
The Port of Stockton is a major deepwater port on the Stockton Ship Channel of the Pacific Ocean and an inland port located more than seventy nautical miles from the ocean, in Stockton, California on the Stockton Channel and San Joaquin Riv ...
– a distance of by river.
In 1926, Stockton pooled its finances with the federal and state governments for a total of $8.2 million. Construction on the channel, which included widening and deepening the riverbed and cutting off meander
A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank ( cut bank) and deposits sediments on an inner, convex bank ...
s and oxbow lake
An oxbow lake is a U-shaped lake or pool that forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off, creating a free-standing body of water. In South Texas, oxbows left by the Rio Grande are called '' resacas''. In Australia, oxbow lakes are call ...
s, began in earnest in 1928. These included major cuts at Hog Island, Venice Island and Mandeville Island
Mandeville Island is an island in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta located about northwest of Stockton, in central California in the United States. The island covers about , and lies between the Old River to the west and Middle River to th ...
, plus five smaller straightening projects. The navigation project shortened the river length by and deepened it to . Additional deepening work was carried out in 1968 and 1982. Today, the navigation channel, known as the Stockton Deep Water Ship Channel, can handle fully loaded vessels of up to and up to long. However, the navigation works have unexpectedly led to low dissolved oxygen levels in the lower San Joaquin River, which has hurt fish populations. This is believed to be a result of the combination of the abrupt geometry change from the shallow river upstream of Stockton to the deep water channel, in addition to pollution from the harbor and city and poor tidal mixing.
Federal and state projects
Central Valley Project
As early as the 1870s, state and federal agencies were already looking at the Central Valley as an area in need of a large water transport project. In 1931 California's Department of Water Resources came up with the State Water Plan, which entailed the construction of dams and canals to transport water from the Sacramento River to the rapidly dwindling San Joaquin. The project was still in its planning stages when the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
hit the United States, and California was unable to raise the funds necessary for building the various facilities. As a result, the project was transferred to the federal government and switched hands several times between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
, colors =
, anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day)
, battles =
, battles_label = Wars
, website =
, commander1 = ...
(USACE) and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) before finally being authorized in the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1937 as a USBR undertaking and part of the New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
, a series of large-scale reforms and construction projects intended to provide jobs for the millions of unemployed during the Depression.
Construction of Friant Dam, the main dam on the San Joaquin River, began in 1937 and was completed in 1942. The dam serves for irrigation and flood control storage, but its main purpose is to divert water into the Madera Canal, which runs northwest along the San Joaquin Valley to the Chowchilla River, and the Friant-Kern Canal, which carries San Joaquin water all the way south into the Tulare Basin, terminating at the Kern River
The Kern River, previously Rio de San Felipe, later La Porciuncula, is an Endangered, Wild and Scenic river in the U.S. state of California, approximately long. It drains an area of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains northeast of Bakersfiel ...
. Both are irrigation and municipal supply canals serving primarily agricultural interests. Water from the Friant Dam supplies almost of farmland in Fresno
Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...
, Kern
KERN (1180 AM broadcasting, AM) is a commercial radio, commercial radio station city of license, licensed to Wasco, California, Wasco-Greenacres, California, and serving the Bakersfield metropolitan area. The station is owned by American General ...
, Madera, and Tulare counties. The diversion of water off the San Joaquin at Friant Dam leaves little more than a trickle below the dam in most years, except for releases serving farms in the immediate area downstream of Friant.
A key point for irrigation water distribution on the San Joaquin, despite its small size, is Mendota Dam. Built in 1871 at the juncture of the San Joaquin River and Fresno Slough, it initially served to divert water into the Main Canal, an irrigation canal for the riverside bottomlands in the San Joaquin Valley. In 1951, Mendota became the terminus of the Delta-Mendota Canal, a USBR project which conveys up to for from the mouth of the Sacramento River to the usually dry San Joaquin at that point. Water from Mendota is distributed in two directions: released into the San Joaquin for downstream diversions at the Sack Dam, another small diversion dam; and into Fresno Slough during the dry season, when no water is flowing in from the Kings River. The latter sends water into the Tulare Basin through the natural channel of the slough, which in essence conveys water in either direction depending on the time of year – north into the San Joaquin during the rainy season, south into the Tulare during the dry months.
Eastside Bypass
Even with the presence of Friant and numerous other flood control dams, large floods still caused significant damage along the San Joaquin River all the way through the late 1950s. The passage of the Flood Control Act of 1944
The Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act of 1944 (P.L. 78–534), enacted in the 2nd session of the 78th Congress, is U.S. legislation that authorized the construction of numerous dams and modifications to previously existing dams, as well as levees acros ...
included provisions for the construction of a levee system along part of the San Joaquin River, but valley farmers were not entirely satisfied. After years of lobbying, farmers convinced the state government to authorize a massive flood-control system of diversion channels and levees whose main component is the Eastside Bypass
East Side or Eastside may refer to:
Places Australia
* East Side, Northern Territory
Canada
* Eastside, Ontario, a neighborhood in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
* Downtown Eastside, Vancouver, British Columbia
United Kingdom
* Eastside, Bi ...
, so named because of its location east of and parallel to the San Joaquin. Groundbreaking of the huge project was in 1959 and construction was finished in 1966.
The bypass system starts with the Chowchilla Canal Bypass, which can divert up to off the San Joaquin, a few miles above Mendota. After intercepting the flow of the Fresno River, the system is known as the Eastside Bypass, which runs northwest, crossing numerous tributaries: Berenda and Ash Sloughs, the Chowchilla River, Owens Creek and Bear Creek. Near the terminus, the bypass channel has a capacity of roughly . The Eastside Bypass ends just upstream of the Merced River confluence, where the San Joaquin levee system is better designed. However, the levees on the bypass channel are generally more well-built than those on the San Joaquin mainstem and thus the channel of the San Joaquin runs dry in some places where the entire flow has been diverted to the bypass system.
Proposed dams
Although fairly large with a capacity of , Millerton Lake, the reservoir of Friant Dam, is small compared to other reservoirs in the San Joaquin basin, such as Don Pedro and Pine Flat. The Bureau of Reclamation in conjunction with the California Department of Water Resources
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is part of the California Natural Resources Agency and is responsible for the management and regulation of the State of California's water usage. The department was created in 1956 by Governor ...
has proposed the construction of a new dam on the San Joaquin, Temperance Flat Dam, a few miles upstream of Friant. The proposed $1.2-3.5 billion dam would stand high and create a reservoir of , well over twice the capacity of Millerton Lake. Proponents of the project cite numerous benefits: flood control, increased storage, hydroelectric potential, and capacity to provide a greater flow in the downstream river during the dry season. It would also give dam operators the advantage of being able to maintain the river to a lower temperature due to the reservoir's great depth. The new reservoir would provide an estimated annual yield of . In November 2014 the dam received $171 million of state funding from Proposition 1A, though project backers had sought $1 billion in funding.
However, opponents assert that the upper San Joaquin River, which is already controlled by dozens of smaller reservoirs upstream of Millerton Lake, will not provide sufficient discharge to fill the reservoir except in very wet years. The new reservoir would flood of the San Joaquin River including whitewater runs, fishing areas and historic sites. It would also inundate two Big Creek Hydro powerhouses, causing a potential net loss of electricity generation. There would be significant evaporation losses from the reservoir, and the water required to fill it would put further pressure on already stressed water resources in the San Joaquin River basin.
Ecology and environment
Hundreds of years ago, the San Joaquin flowed freely through a grass and marsh-dominated region variously known as the "California prairie", "California annual grassland", or "Central Valley grasslands". It is widely believed that the dominant grass species throughout the San Joaquin River valley and Tulare Basin, as well as the Sacramento Valley
, photo =Sacramento Riverfront.jpg
, photo_caption= Sacramento
, map_image=Map california central valley.jpg
, map_caption= The Central Valley of California
, location = California, United States
, coordinates =
, boundaries = Sierra Nevada (ea ...
, the Sierra foothills and Coast Ranges, was ''Nassella pulchra
''Nassella pulchra'', basionym ''Stipa pulchra'', is a species of grass known by the common names purple needlegrass and purple tussockgrass. It is native to the U.S. state of California, where it occurs throughout the coastal hills, valleys, an ...
'', a type of bunchgrass
Tussock grasses or bunch grasses are a group of grass species in the family Poaceae. They usually grow as singular plants in clumps, tufts, hummocks, or bunches, rather than forming a sod or lawn, in meadows, grasslands, and prairies. As perennial ...
more commonly known as purple needlegrass. Today, this vegetation community exists only in isolated pockets because of development of the valley for agriculture, and in much of the remnant open areas where it once thrived, now grows introduced flora such as annual rye and wild oat
''Avena'' is a genus of Eurasian and African plants in the grass family. Collectively known as the oats, they include some species which have been cultivated for thousands of years as a food source for humans and livestock. They are widespread ...
. The vegetation communities created by the introduced grasses are sometimes referred to as "valley grassland", which is highly seasonal but is spread throughout the Central Valley from near Redding to south of Bakersfield. These grasses all thrive in the Mediterranean climate
A Mediterranean climate (also called a dry summer temperate climate ''Cs'') is a temperate climate sub-type, generally characterized by warm, dry summers and mild, fairly wet winters; these weather conditions are typically experienced in the ...
that dominates much of the San Joaquin Valley.
The San Joaquin River and its marshes and wetlands provide a critical resting and breeding stop for migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway
The Pacific Flyway is a major north-south flyway for migratory birds in the Americas, extending from Alaska to Patagonia. Every year, migratory birds travel some or all of this distance both in spring and in fall, following food sources, heading ...
. Once, the seasonal bird populations in the San Joaquin basin were immense, especially in the now-dry Tulare Lake region: "It took something different, though, to capture the sound of the blue sky as it turned dark and deafening from the wings and cries of millions of native and migratory birds – Canada geese
The Canada goose (''Branta canadensis''), or Canadian goose, is a large wild goose with a black head and neck, white cheeks, white under its chin, and a brown body. It is native to the arctic and temperate regions of North America, and it is o ...
, mallards
The mallard () or wild duck (''Anas platyrhynchos'') is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurasia, and North Africa, and has been introduced species, introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Bra ...
, swan
Swans are birds of the family (biology), family Anatidae within the genus ''Cygnus''. The swans' closest relatives include the goose, geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form t ...
s, pelican
Pelicans (genus ''Pelecanus'') are a genus of large water birds that make up the family Pelecanidae. They are characterized by a long beak and a large throat pouch used for catching prey and draining water from the scooped-up contents before s ...
s, cranes, teal
alt=American teal duck (male), Green-winged teal (male)
Teal is a greenish-blue colour. Its name comes from that of a bird — the Eurasian teal (''Anas crecca'') — which presents a similarly coloured stripe on its head. The word is oft ...
, and curlew
The curlews () are a group of nine species of birds in the genus ''Numenius'', characterised by their long, slender, downcurved bills and mottled brown plumage. The English name is imitative of the Eurasian curlew's call, but may have been in ...
s. How to mimic the sudden flight of flocks so immense they extinguished the sun? One of the first white men to camp along the lake could think of only one noise, the roar of a freight train, that compared with the takeoff of the birds." Historically, the grasslands and the fringes of the great marshes and lakes provided habitat for large grazing animals including pronghorn
The pronghorn (, ) (''Antilocapra americana'') is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed, hoofed) mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America. Though not an antelope, it is known colloquially in North America as the American a ...
, mule deer
The mule deer (''Odocoileus hemionus'') is a deer indigenous to western North America; it is named for its ears, which are large like those of the mule. Two subspecies of mule deer are grouped into the black-tailed deer.
Unlike the related whit ...
and the endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...
tule elk
The tule elk (''Cervus canadensis nannodes'') is a subspecies of elk found only in California, ranging from the grasslands and marshlands of the Central Valley to the grassy hills on the coast. The subspecies name derives from the tule (), a s ...
, as well as predators such as the San Joaquin kit fox
The endangered San Joaquin kit fox (''Vulpes macrotis mutica'') was formerly very common in the San Joaquin Valley and through much of Central California. Its 1990 population was estimated to be 7,000. This subspecies is still endangered, after n ...
; all of these species have seen dramatic population declines as their native habitat has fallen under the plow.
Human activities have replaced or altered over 95 percent of the historic wetlands as well as the California oak woodland
California oak woodland is a plant community found throughout the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion of California in the United States and northwestern Baja California in Mexico. Oak woodland is widespread at lower elevations in coasta ...
habitat, which originally occurred along stream and river corridors in the foothills, and the tule grass that once thrived in huge stands on the edges of marshes and lakes. Some of the richest remaining marsh habitats are in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which, despite significant agricultural and infrastructure development, has retained many of its original swamps and backwaters. Before the 19th century, the delta was a region of numerous islands of nutrient-rich peat
Peat (), also known as turf (), is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem covers and is the most efficien ...
, alluvial deposits, winding channels and waterways. Since then, most of the Delta islands have been cultivated, and consistent use of the land has resulted in subsidence, in some cases up to . Water diversions from the rivers feeding it have increased salinity, which has in turn caused declines in fish populations that once thrived in the region.
As defined by the World Wildlife Fund
The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the Wo ...
, the San Joaquin River watershed is part of the Sacramento-San Joaquin freshwater ecoregion, which supports almost 40 species of freshwater fish. These include several types of lamprey
Lampreys (sometimes inaccurately called lamprey eels) are an ancient extant lineage of jawless fish of the order Petromyzontiformes , placed in the superclass Cyclostomata. The adult lamprey may be characterized by a toothed, funnel-like s ...
s, sturgeon
Sturgeon is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretace ...
s, sunfish, perch
Perch is a common name for fish of the genus ''Perca'', freshwater gamefish belonging to the family Percidae. The perch, of which three species occur in different geographical areas, lend their name to a large order of vertebrates: the Percif ...
and various anadromous fish
Fish migration is mass relocation by fish from one area or body of water to another. Many types of fish migrate on a regular basis, on time scales ranging from daily to annually or longer, and over distances ranging from a few metres to thousan ...
species such as salmon
Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...
and steelhead
Steelhead, or occasionally steelhead trout, is the common name of the anadromous form of the coastal rainbow trout or redband trout (O. m. gairdneri). Steelhead are native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific basin in Northeast Asia and N ...
. Some of these fish are believed to have descended from fishes of the Columbia Basin in geologically ancient times, when the upper reaches of the Sacramento River watershed were connected with that of the Snake River
The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest region in the United States. At long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Snake ...
. Up to 75 percent of the historic species were endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...
to the Sacramento-San Joaquin basin. Most native fish stocks have suffered because of predation by introduced species and dam construction. In a study from 1993 to 1995, it was found that the main stem of the San Joaquin River was mainly populated by fathead minnow
Fathead minnow (''Pimephales promelas''), also known as fathead or tuffy, is a species of temperate freshwater fish belonging to the genus ''Pimephales'' of the cyprinid family. The natural geographic range extends throughout much of North Amer ...
, red shiner
The red shiner or red-horse minnow (''Cyprinella lutrensis'') is a North American species of freshwater fish in the family Cyprinidae. They are deep-bodied and laterally compressed,Farringer R.T., III, A.A. Echelle, and S.F. Lehtinen. 1979. Repr ...
, threadfin shad
The threadfin shad (''Dorosoma petenense'') is a small pelagic fish common in rivers, large streams, and reservoirs of the Southeastern United States. Like the American gizzard shad, the threadfin shad has an elongated dorsal ray, but unlike the ...
and inland silverside
The inland silverside (''Menidia beryllina'') is a neotropical silverside native to eastern North America, and introduced into California. It is a fish of estuaries and freshwater environments.
Inland silversides are quite elongate even for silv ...
, all of which were introduced. Downstream portions of the river's main tributaries were populated mainly by largemouth and smallmouth bass, redear sunfish
The redear sunfish (''Lepomis microlophus''), also known as the shellcracker, Georgia bream, cherry gill, chinquapin, improved bream, rouge ear sunfish and sun perch) is a freshwater fish in the family Centrarchidae and is native to the southeast ...
and white catfish, while native species have survived relatively well in the upper reaches of the river and its tributaries, which also play host to introduced brown trout
The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a European species of salmonid fish that has been widely introduced into suitable environments globally. It includes purely freshwater populations, referred to as the riverine ecotype, ''Salmo trutta'' morph ...
.
Pollution
For its size, the San Joaquin River is one of the most polluted rivers in the United States, especially in its lower course. Years of pesticides and fertilizers being applied to the surrounding lands as well as municipal runoff have led to elevated levels of selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with the symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal (more rarely considered a metalloid) with properties that are intermediate between the elements above and below in the periodic table, sulfur and tellurium, ...
, fluoride
Fluoride (). According to this source, is a possible pronunciation in British English. is an inorganic, monatomic anion of fluorine, with the chemical formula (also written ), whose salts are typically white or colorless. Fluoride salts typ ...
, nitrate
Nitrate is a polyatomic ion
A polyatomic ion, also known as a molecular ion, is a covalent bonded set of two or more atoms, or of a metal complex, that can be considered to behave as a single unit and that has a net charge that is not zer ...
s and other substances in the river and its tributaries; pesticide pollution
The environmental effects of pesticides describe the broad series of consequences of using pesticides. The unintended consequences of pesticides is one of the main drivers of the negative impact of modern industrial agriculture on the environme ...
is now considered "ubiquitous" to the San Joaquin River system. The selenium is believed to originate from soils on the west side of the valley and in the Coast Ranges, which are rich with the element. Additionally, the San Joaquin is suffering chronic salinity problems due to high levels of minerals being washed off the land by irrigation practices. Abandoned mines contribute toxic acid mine drainage
Acid mine drainage, acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD), or acid rock drainage (ARD) is the outflow of acidic water from metal mines or coal mines.
Acid rock drainage occurs naturally within some environments as part of the rock weathering ...
to some tributaries of the river. One of the worst environmental disasters was at Kesterson Reservoir
The Kesterson Reservoir is part of the current San Luis National Wildlife Refuge in California. Formerly a unit of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, the reservoir was an important stopping point for migratory waterfowl. Kesterson once consis ...
, a disposal site for agricultural drain water which doubled as a wildlife refuge. Initially, animals and plants thrived in the artificial wetlands that were created here, but in 1983, it was found that birds had suffered severe deformities and deaths due to steadily increasing levels of chemicals and toxins. In the next few years, all the fish species died except for the mosquito fish
The western Mosquitofish (''Gambusia affinis'') is a North American freshwater fish, also known commonly, if ambiguously, as simply Mosquitofish or by its generic name, ''Gambusia'', or by the common name gambezi. Its sister species, the east ...
, and algae bloom
An algal bloom or algae bloom is a rapid increase or accumulation in the population of algae in Fresh water, freshwater or Ocean, marine water systems. It is often recognized by the discoloration in the water from the algae's pigments. The term ...
s proliferated in the foul water. These have had not only an adverse impact on San Joaquin River ecology, but also cause pollution to the sources of most of the large aqueducts in the state – the California and Delta-Mendota Canals, for example.
Salmon
Before irrigation development, the San Joaquin River and its tributaries once supported the third largest run of Pacific salmon
''Oncorhynchus'' is a genus of fish in the family Salmonidae; it contains the Pacific salmon and Pacific trout. The name of the genus is derived from the Greek ὄγκος (ónkos, “lump, bend”) + ῥύγχος (rhúnkhos, “snout”), in r ...
in California, including prodigious spring, summer, fall, and late-fall runs of chinook salmon
The Chinook salmon (''Oncorhynchus tshawytscha'') is the largest and most valuable species of Pacific salmon in North America, as well as the largest in the genus ''Oncorhynchus''. Its common name is derived from the Chinookan peoples. Other ve ...
. The California Department of Fish and Game
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), formerly known as the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), is a state agency under the California Natural Resources Agency. The Department of Fish and Wildlife manages and protect ...
estimated in the 1930s that the historic salmon run
''Salmon Run'' is a 1982 video game for the Atari 8-bit family created by Bill Williams and distributed via the Atari Program Exchange. ''Salmon Run'' was the first game in Williams's career, followed by a string of successes noted for their o ...
was likely in the vicinity of 200,000 to 500,000 spawners annually, but by the mid-20th century, reduction in river flows led to the run dropping to about 3,000-7,000. Some sources put the historic populations as high as three hundred thousand, but this is highly unlikely because of the limited habitat available in the watershed.
Construction of dams in the San Joaquin watershed has led to nearly all of the good spawning streams, located higher in the mountains near the headwaters of the San Joaquin and its tributaries, being cut off to the salmon. The remaining areas left for the salmon to spawn in are undesirable. Prior to the building of the Friant Dam in 1944, the San Joaquin River was believed to have over 6,000 miles of streambed suitable and available to spawning salmon. However, in 1993 it was estimated that there was just 300 miles.
This significant loss of suitable spawning habitat is due to lack of spawning-sized gravel recruitment from lateral and upstream sources due to the installation of manmade barriers that block this gravel from passing naturally downstream. Without recruitment, high flow releases scour gravel from spawning beds, so that they gradually become smaller and smaller. The smaller pieces of gravel are more easily picked up and moved downstream, leaving behind larger pieces that the salmon are unable to move to bury their eggs in a process called redd construction. This further crowds the salmon into smaller and smaller suitable spawning beds, which increases the likelihood of redd superimposition. This is when spawners construct their redds, or pockets in the gravel to lay their eggs in, on top of preexisting redds, thereby killing or burying some of the eggs in the pre-existing redds. The EPA has also stated that the remaining gravel is "probably fairly highly embedded and therefore of reduced quality and unavailable to fish for spawning". The Temperature of the water can also affect the level of spawning. The best temperatures for spring and fall run Chinook salmon are between 42 °F and 57 °F. However, in 77% of the years studied by the San Joaquin River Restoration Program, water temperatures were elevated above 57 °F and abnormalities and egg morbidity rates increased.
The introduction of predatory fish species such as bluegill
The bluegill (''Lepomis macrochirus''), sometimes referred to as "bream", "brim", "sunny", or "copper nose" as is common in Texas, is a species of North American freshwater fish, native to and commonly found in streams, rivers, lakes, ponds and ...
and various types of bass that prey on salmon smolt are also a major contributor to the decline. The San Joaquin's point of divergence with the distributary Old River has historically created a sort of bottleneck for out migrating salmon because the Old River in turn branches into many side-channels and sloughs of the delta as well as various canal intakes. Recent years have seen work by the California Department of Water Resources and the California Department of Fish and Game to construct and manage temporary rock barriers at the head of the Old River in order to keep fish in the main channel of the San Joaquin River. In the fall of 2009, just 2,236 salmon returned to the entire river system to spawn; this has led to a government ban on salmon fishing off the coasts of northern California and Oregon. Recent years have seen efforts to bring back some of the salmon population to the San Joaquin and some of its tributaries; these include the establishment of fish hatcheries. , plans had been finalized for a $14.5 million hatchery near Friant Dam as part of a $20 million federal restoration project for the fish.
In late 2012, even though there are still dams in the way of allowing salmon to navigate the entire river, attempts were made to get salmon to lay eggs in the upper portion of the river near Friant Dam.
The closest example of a revived salmon population is the Butte River near Chico.
Groundwater overdraft
Because of the heavy demand of water for agriculture and the insufficient flow of the San Joaquin River, groundwater
Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...
in the San Joaquin Valley's rich aquifer
An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characterist ...
has been an important source of irrigation supply since the late 19th century. Historically, surface water was able to provide all the needed supply, but as agricultural lands spread across more and more of the valley, groundwater pumping became increasingly common. Also, with the introduction of better technology that allowed farmers to dig deeper wells and install electrical pumps, groundwater was seen as an often cheaper and easily accessible source compared to the river. Water imported from Northern California through the Central Valley Project managed to stave off increasing rates of withdrawal for several years, until the 1977 California drought heavily decreased water supplies from these sources for a while and caused many farmers to return to groundwater pumping.
Groundwater withdrawal reached its peak during the 1960s with more than being drawn from the aquifer each year – over twice the present flow of the San Joaquin River – which accounted for 69.6% of all the groundwater pumped within the Central Valley, and nearly 14 percent of all the groundwater withdrawn in the United States. In a 1970 study, it was found that more than of the San Joaquin River valley had been affected by land subsidence
Subsidence is a general term for downward vertical movement of the Earth's surface, which can be caused by both natural processes and human activities. Subsidence involves little or no horizontal movement, which distinguishes it from slope move ...
in excess of . The maximum drop in elevation was near Mendota, the northward bend of the San Joaquin River, at over . In some areas, the water table
The water table is the upper surface of the zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with water. It can also be simply explained as the depth below which the ground is saturated.
T ...
has declined more than vertically, forcing farmers to sink their wells as deep as to hit more abundant pockets of the underground water.
Even after better practices and new sources of water through federal projects, groundwater pumping continues at a tremendous rate. The San Joaquin Valley aquifer lost about from 1961 to 2003, which despite being a dramatic reduction from the 1960s, still amounts to nearly per year. The subsidence caused by groundwater withdrawal has threatened infrastructure in the San Joaquin Valley, including the California Aqueduct
The Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct is a system of canals, tunnels, and pipelines that conveys water collected from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and valleys of Northern and Central California to Southern California. Named after Cali ...
, a State Water Project facility that conveys water from the delta region to coastal-central and southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...
. Subsidence has also damaged highways and power lines as well as causing some areas to be more susceptible to flooding.
Reconnecting the San Joaquin to the ocean
In 2009, the Bureau of Reclamation began to release water from Friant Dam in an effort to restore two once-dry stretches of the San Joaquin of about . These two reaches are from below the dam to Mendota Pool, and from the Sack Dam, a diversion dam
A diversion dam is a dam that diverts all or a portion of the flow of a river from its natural course. Diversion dams do not generally impound water in a reservoir; instead, the water is diverted into an artificial water course or canal, which ...
approximately downstream, to the confluence with the Merced River. The flows were initially in that year. The increased flows will not only begin to restore large areas of desiccated riverside habitat below the dam, but will serve the primary purpose of restoring salmon runs in the upper San Joaquin watershed. The restoration flows, however, will cause a 12 to 15 percent reduction of water provided by the Friant Division of the CVP with complaints from irrigators in the valley as a result. There has also been a lawsuit regarding damage to farmland west of the San Joaquin, near the town of Los Baños, claiming that the flows are seeping through levees that have not seen use in years due to the drying out of the river channel.
In addition to the dry reaches, the higher discharge in the San Joaquin will help restore a total of of river, figuring in stretches with low or polluted flows. It is also hoped that the water will help dilute contaminants in the river caused by pesticide
Pesticides are substances that are meant to control pests. This includes herbicide, insecticide, nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide, rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent, microbicide, fungicide, and lampri ...
s and fertilizer
A fertilizer (American English) or fertiliser (British English; see spelling differences) is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from ...
s that are applied to the surrounding farmland. In turn, the boost in flow could assist restoration efforts and help flush out saline water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where water is pumped into state aqueducts which provide water supplies to two-thirds of Californians.
Phase One improvements include the following: The San Joaquin River east of Los Banos will be increased to route up to of water by December 2011. Salmon will be re-introduced to the river in 2012, most habitat conservation work on the San Joaquin River will be completed by the end of 2013. Phase One will include interim flows of up to . Capacity will be increased to handle up to from Friant Dam to the Mendota Dam by December 2013. A fish ladder will also be added to the Sack Dam.
Phase Two improvements include the following: The USBR will begin releasing up to , or "full restoration flows", from the Friant Dam in 2014. Flows will depend on whether the year is wet, dry or for intermediate levels of precipitation. Additional rehabilitation work is projected to continue until 2016 to ensure that the river can transport of water through rainfall and releases from Friant Dam all the way to Bear Creek and the Eastside bypass. The higher capacity of the river is also to accommodate rainfall or prevent flooding.
The total cost of the restoration, one of the largest river recovery efforts in the United States, could be up to $800 million or even a billion dollars. Approximately $330 million will be paid by Central Valley farmers, and the state and federal governments will provide the remaining funding.
Efforts have been under way to restore wetlands along the San Joaquin River as well as on the historic shores of Tulare Lake
Tulare Lake () (Spanish: ''Laguna de Tache'', Yokuts: ''Pah-áh-su'') is a freshwater dry lake with residual wetlands and marshes in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. After Lake Cahuilla disappeared in the 17th century ...
. These primarily entail the cleanup of existing wetlands and procuring additional water supplies, rather than converting agricultural land back into the original swamp and marsh. Since wetlands can provide a natural form of flood control – wetlands act like sponges, absorbing flood flows during the rainy season and releasing the accumulated water during the dry season – and also can filter out many forms of toxins, especially from fertilizers, they are important to maintaining good water quality in the San Joaquin River. Wetlands preservation group Ducks Unlimited
Ducks Unlimited (DU) is an American nonprofit organization 501(c) dedicated to the conservation of wetlands and associated upland habitats for waterfowl, other wildlife, and people. It has had a membership of around 700,000 since January 2013.
...
was awarded a $1 million grant in 2005 as part of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act The North American Wetlands Conservation Act (P.L. 101-233) (December 13, 1989) authorizes a wetlands habitat program, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which provides grants to protect and manage wetland habitats for migr ...
in order to conduct restoration work on of swamps and marshes throughout the San Joaquin Valley.
The San Joaquin River was last connected to the ocean in 2010. By reconnecting, it means the portion from Friant Dam to where the San Joaquin River joins the Merced river above Vernalis. This may happen in 2016 or 2017.
Watershed
At , the San Joaquin River watershed proper drains a fair swath of inland central California, an area comparable to the size of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P. – is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula by t ...
. If combined with the Tulare Basin, which historically (and still rarely) experiences northerly outflow to the San Joaquin River, it would be the largest single drainage basin entirely in the state. The San Joaquin River basin is roughly synonymous with the San Joaquin Valley, and is bounded by the Sierra Nevada to the east, the Coast Ranges on the west, and the Tehachapi Mountains on the south.
The San Joaquin Valley's major southeast–northwest axis runs roughly parallel with the Pacific coast
Pacific coast may be used to reference any coastline that borders the Pacific Ocean.
Geography Americas
Countries on the western side of the Americas have a Pacific coast as their western or southwestern border, except for Panama, where the Pac ...
of California; it measures covering all or parts of seventeen California counties stretching from north of Lodi to well south of Bakersfield
Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's populat ...
. Most of the elevation change in the San Joaquin occurs within the first above Friant Dam. Its highest headwaters are at over , but by the time the river reaches the foothills, it is a mere above sea level.
On the west and northwest, the San Joaquin watershed borders those of rivers draining into the Pacific, while beyond almost all of the other divides lie endorheic basin
An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes ...
s, mostly of the Great Basin
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic basin, endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California ...
. To the north, a low series of ridges separates the San Joaquin River basin from that of the Sacramento River. The Coast Ranges bound the watershed on the west and borders on the drainages of the Pajaro River
The Pajaro River (''pájaro'' is ''bird'' in Spanish language, Spanish) is a U.S. river in the Central Coast (California), Central Coast region of California, forming part of the border between San Benito County, California, San Benito and Santa ...
, Salinas River and the endorheic Carrizo Plain. On the south, the Tehachapis wall off the Tulare Basin from the Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in ...
. To the east, the Sierra Nevada separate the San Joaquin drainage from those of multiple smaller rivers that terminate in various Great Basin lakes. From north to south, these are the Carson
Carson may refer to:
People
*Carson (surname), people with the surname
*Carson (given name), people with the given name
Places
;In the United States
* Carson, California, a city
* Carson Township, Fayette County, Illinois
*Carson, Iowa, a city
* ...
, Walker
Walker or The Walker may refer to:
People
*Walker (given name)
*Walker (surname)
*Walker (Brazilian footballer) (born 1982), Brazilian footballer
Places
In the United States
*Walker, Arizona, in Yavapai County
*Walker, Mono County, California
* ...
, and Owens River
The Owens River is a river in eastern California in the United States, approximately long.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed March 17, 2011, It drains into and through the ...
s. The sloping alluvial fan
An alluvial fan is an accumulation of sediments that fans outwards from a concentrated source of sediments, such as a narrow canyon emerging from an escarpment. They are characteristic of mountainous terrain in arid to semiarid climates, but a ...
of the Kings River divides the northern San Joaquin Valley from the Tulare Basin.
The overwhelming majority of the economic base in the San Joaquin River watershed is provided by agriculture. The valley is widely considered one of the most productive farming regions in the world, and the top four U.S. counties ranked by agricultural production are all located in the San Joaquin watershed and Tulare Basin. The crops grown in these four counties alone are valued at over $12.6 billion annually, while the production of the entire valley is estimated at more than $14.4 billion. The main crop in the valley by annual sales is cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus ''Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor perce ...
, but more than 200 types of produce are grown along the San Joaquin River and in the Tulare Basin, including rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima
''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown i ...
, almond
The almond (''Prunus amygdalus'', syn. ''Prunus dulcis'') is a species of tree native to Iran and surrounding countries, including the Levant. The almond is also the name of the edible and widely cultivated seed of this tree. Within the genus ...
s and lettuce
Lettuce (''Lactuca sativa'') is an annual plant of the family Asteraceae. It is most often grown as a leaf vegetable, but sometimes for its stem and seeds. Lettuce is most often used for salads, although it is also seen in other kinds of food, ...
. Livestock
Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals ...
raising is also a major business in the valley. This prodigious output has earned the basin many names, including the "breadbasket" or "salad bowl" of the United States.
, the San Joaquin River watershed had a human population of roughly 4,039,000, about 1.9 million of whom live within the section of the watershed not including the Tulare Basin. The largest cities are Bakersfield, near the south end of the valley on the Kern River; Fresno, roughly in the geographic center; Modesto, on the Tuolumne River; and Stockton, on the southeast fringe of the Delta region. Other major cities include Visalia
Visalia ( ) is a city in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley of California. The population was 141,384 as per the 2020 census. Visalia is the fifth-largest city in the San Joaquin Valley, the 42nd most populous in California, and 192nd in ...
, Tulare, Hanford, Porterville, Madera, Merced
Merced (; Spanish for "Mercy") is a city in, and the county seat of, Merced County, California, United States, in the San Joaquin Valley. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 86,333, up from 78,958 in 2010. Incorporated on April 1 ...
, Turlock
Turlock is a city in Stanislaus County, California, United States. Its estimated 2019 population of 73,631 made it the second-largest city in Stanislaus County after Modesto.
History
Founded on December 22, 1871, by prominent grain farmer Jo ...
, Manteca and Lodi. Population growth is among the highest in the state of California and more than twice the U.S. average. In Madera County
Madera County (), officially the County of Madera, is a county at the geographic center of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 156,255. The county seat is Madera.
Madera County comprises the Madera, CA Metr ...
, near the geographic middle of the basin, growth was 51.5% between 1990 and 2003, the highest in the San Joaquin basin. Most of the major cities lie on the State Route 99 corridor, which runs along the entirety of the San Joaquin Valley and forms the primary thoroughfare for the valley. Interstate 5
Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Califor ...
provides the major transportation route for the west side of the valley.
Land cover in the watershed is predominantly agriculture and forest, and large expanses of shrubland and semiarid foothill terrain also occupy portions of the basin in addition to a growing urban percentage. Irrigated land covers 30% of the watershed followed by forested areas in addition to national forest and park land that encompass 26.8% of the total land area. Built-up areas use a much smaller percentage of the watershed, at just 1.9%. In the San Joaquin's direct drainage region (not including the Tulare Basin) agricultural cover was 19.2%, forests embraced 28.4%, and urban areas occupied 2.4% as of 1995. The basin's main population centers are in the north and south and population density generally increases from west to east. In fact, despite the relatively small percentage of developed areas, more than 50% of the population lives in the watershed's four largest cities: Fresno
Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...
, Bakersfield
Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's populat ...
, Stockton and Modesto
Modesto () is the county seat and largest city of Stanislaus County, California, United States. With a population of 218,464 at the 2020 census, it is the 19th largest city in the state of California and forms part of the Sacramento-Stockton ...
.[Benke and Cushing, p. 554]
Tributaries
Seven major tributaries flow directly into the San Joaquin River, all of which run from the Sierra Nevada westwards into the main stem. In addition, some of the discharge of the Kings River also enters the San Joaquin directly (but seasonally) through a distributary
A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Distributaries are a common feature of river deltas. The phenomenon is known as river bifurcation. The opposite of a distributar ...
. Of these, the Tuolumne River
The Tuolumne River (Yokutsan: ''Tawalimnu'') flows for through Central California, from the high Sierra Nevada to join the San Joaquin River in the Central Valley. Originating at over above sea level in Yosemite National Park, the Tuolumne ...
is the largest in any respect: longest, greatest drainage basin, and highest discharge. The Merced River
The Merced River (), in the central part of the U.S. state of California, is a -long tributary of the San Joaquin River flowing from the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada into the San Joaquin Valley. It is most well known for its swift and st ...
is the second largest by length and drainage basin, but the Mokelumne River
The Mokelumne River ( or ; ''Mokelumne'', Miwok for "People of the Fish Net") is a -long river in northern California in the United States. The river flows west from a rugged portion of the central Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada into the Ce ...
has a greater flow. Tributaries are listed below proceeding from the mouth upstream, with their respective ''main-stem'' length, watershed and discharge noted. Rivers of the Tulare Basin are noted below the San Joaquin's direct tributaries with their individual data. Most of the tributaries had much larger flows before irrigation diversions – for example, the Tuolumne's historic discharge was almost 48% higher than it is now.
Tributaries in the Tulare Lake basin
See also
*List of rivers of California
This is a list of rivers in the U.S. state of California, grouped by region. Major lakes and reservoirs, if applicable, are indicated in italics.
North Coast (north of Humboldt Bay)
Rivers and streams between the Oregon border and Humboldt Bay th ...
*San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge
The San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge is a protected area of along the San Joaquin River in the northern San Joaquin Valley, California. It is within San Joaquin County and Stanislaus County.
It protects more than of riparian woodlan ...
Notes
References
Works cited
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*Gudde, Erwin G.; Bright, William (2004). ''California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names.'' University of California Press. .
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External links
California Central Valley Grasslands
Great Flood of 1862
Tulare Lake Restoration - Fiction or Fact?
Using Tulare Lake For Water Storage
California Water Plan Update 2005 San Joaquin Hydrologic Region Chapter
published by the California Department of Water Resources
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is part of the California Natural Resources Agency and is responsible for the management and regulation of the State of California's water usage. The department was created in 1956 by Governor ...
Map of San Joaquin Reclamation and Levee Districts
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20110208100044/http://sanjoaquinbasin.com/ SanJoaquinBasin.com - A website devoted to the San Joaquin Basinbr>2006 Agreement
{{Authority control
San Joaquin Valley
*San Joaquin
Tributaries of San Pablo Bay
Geography of the San Joaquin Valley
Geography of the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay watershed
Rivers of Contra Costa County, California
Rivers of Fresno County, California
Rivers of Kern County, California
Rivers of Madera County, California
Rivers of Merced County, California
Rivers of Stanislaus County, California
Rivers of San Joaquin County, California
Rivers of Sacramento County, California
Central Valley Project
Geography of the Central Valley (California)
Rivers of Northern California
Rivers of Southern California