The Central Valley is a broad, elongated, flat valley that dominates the interior of California. It is 40–60 mi (60–100 km) wide and runs approximately 450 mi (720 km) from north-northwest to south-southeast, inland from and parallel to the Pacific coast of the state. It covers approximately 18,000 sq mi (47,000 km2), about 11% of California's land area. The valley is bounded by the Coast Ranges to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east.
Tulare Lake or Tache Lake is a freshwater lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. Historically, Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. For thousands of years, from the Paleolithic onward, Tulare Lake was a uniquely rich area, which supported perhaps the largest population of Native Americans north of present-day Mexico.
The San Joaquin River is the longest river of Central California. The 366-mile (589 km) long river starts in the high Sierra Nevada, and flows through the rich agricultural region of the northern San Joaquin Valley before reaching Suisun Bay, San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean. An important source of irrigation water as well as a wildlife corridor, the San Joaquin is among the most heavily dammed and diverted of California's rivers.
The San Joaquin Valley is the southern half of California's Central Valley. Famed as a major breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley is an important source of food, producing a significant part of California's agricultural output.
The California Central Valley grasslands is a temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands ecoregion in California's Central Valley. It a diverse ecoregion containing areas of desert grassland, prairie, savanna, riparian forest, marsh, several types of seasonal vernal pools, and large lakes such as now-dry Tulare Lake, Buena Vista Lake, and Kern Lake.
Central California is generally thought of as the middle third of the U.S. state, of California, 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 Joaquin Valley, part of the Central Coast, the central hills of the California Coast Ranges and the foothills and mountain areas of the central Sierra Nevada.
Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park is a state park unit of California, United States, preserving Allensworth, the only California town to be founded, financed and governed by African Americans. The small farming community was founded in 1908 by Lt. Colonel Allen Allensworth, Professor William Payne, William Peck, a minister; John W. Palmer, a miner; and Harry A. Mitchell, a real estate agent, dedicated to improving the economic and social status of African Americans. Colonel Allensworth (1842–1914) had a friendship with Booker T. Washington and was inspired by the Tuskegee Institute and development in its neighboring town. Allensworth hoped to develop the "Tuskegee of the West".
The Fresno kangaroo rat or San Joaquin kangaroo rat is a species of rodent in the family Heteromyidae. It is endemic to areas within and near the San Joaquin Valley of California in the United States. Habitat destruction due to agricultural development and urbanization has put this species at risk, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed its conservation status as "vulnerable".
Coccidioides posadasii is a pathogenic fungus that, along with Coccidioides immitis, is the causative agent of coccidioidomycosis, or valley fever in humans. It resides in the soil in certain parts of the Southwestern United States, northern Mexico, and some other areas in the Americas, but its evolution was connected to its animal hosts.
Great Valley Grasslands State Park is a state park of California, United States, preserving a parcel of remnant native grassland in the San Joaquin Valley. Such a temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome was once widespread throughout the whole Central Valley. The 2,826-acre (1,144 ha) park was established in 1982. Largely undeveloped, it was formed by combining two former state park units: San Luis Island and Fremont Ford State Recreation Area. Its chief attractions for visitors are spring wildflowers, fishing, and wildlife watching.
The South Belridge Oil Field is a large oil field in northwestern Kern County, San Joaquin Valley, California, about forty miles west of Bakersfield. Discovered in 1911, and having a cumulative production of over 1,500 million barrels (240,000,000 m3) of oil at the end of 2008, it is the fourth-largest oil field in California, after the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, Kern River Oil Field, and Wilmington Oil Field, and is the sixth-most productive field in the United States. Its estimated remaining reserves, as of the end of 2008, were around 494 million barrels (78,500,000 m3), the second-largest in the state, and it had 6,253 active wells. The principal operator on the field was Aera Energy LLC, a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil. Additionally, the field included the only onshore wells in California owned and operated by ExxonMobil.
Atriplex tularensis is an extremely rare species of saltbush known by the common names Bakersfield smallscale, Tulare saltbush, and Tulare orach.
Chloropyron palmatum is an endangered species of salt-tolerant, flowering plant in the family Orobanchaceae. It is a low, highly branched herbaceous annual with each flower enclosed by a single, characteristically palmate bract. It is known by the common names of palmate salty bird's-beak and palmate-bract bird's-beak.
Visalia, California, commonly known in the 1850s as Four Creeks, is the oldest continuously inhabited inland European settlement between Stockton and Los Angeles. The city played an important role in the American colonization of the San Joaquin Valley as the county seat of Old Tulare County, an expansive region comprising most if not all of modern-day Fresno, Kings, and Kern counties.
Pixley National Wildlife Refuge is located 35 miles (56 km) south of Tulare, California and 45 miles (72 km) north of Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley. The 6,939-acre (2,808 ha) nature refuge represents one of the few remaining examples of the grasslands, vernal pools, and playas that once bordered historic Tulare Lake, the largest lake west of the Great Lakes until the late 19th century.
Kern National Wildlife Refuge is a 11,249-acre (45.52 km2) protected area located in the southern portion of California's San Joaquin Valley, 20 miles (32 km) west of the city of Delano. Situated on the southern margin of what was once the largest freshwater wetland complex known as Tulare Lake in the western United States, Kern National Wildlife Refuge provides an optimum wintering habitat for migratory birds with an emphasis on waterfowl and water birds. The wetlands provide habitat for birds as part of the Pacific Flyway.
An alkali sink is a salty basin land form. In these depressions, which are found only in the San Joaquin Valley, California, rainwater drains to the basin and collects in areas where it cannot penetrate the soil due to a hard layer of clay or caliche, producing a pond or lake. When the water evaporates, it leaves behind increasing amounts of salt and minerals in the soil, creating a high pH level in the water and soil.
Paruroctonus is a genus of scorpions in the family Vaejovidae. There are about 10 described species in Paruroctonus.
Paruroctonus soda is a species of scorpion in the genus Paruroctonus. It lives in the deserts of Southern California where it is found in dry lake beds and playas of Soda Lake and Koehn Lake. P. soda is an alkali sink specialist species.
Paruroctonus conclusus is a species of scorpion in the genus Paruroctonus. It lives in the deserts of Southern California where it associates with alkali clay soils in the Mojave Desert area of eastern Kern County. P. conclusus is an alkali sink specialist species with an extremely small range.
