The Vanished Tulare Lake

Tulare Lake, located on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley and named for the tule rush plants that would grow around its shores, was the largest freshwater lake in the Western US. In the wake of the United States Civil War, late 19th-century settlers drained the surrounding marshes for early agriculture. The government dammed the Kaweah, Kern, Kings, and Tule Rivers upstream in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which turned the river's headwaters into a system of reservoirs. In the San Joaquin Valley, canals were built to deliver that water and divert the remaining flows for agricultural irrigation and municipal water uses. Today, Tulare Lake is dry.

Source: Wikipedia