I found myself on historicalcharts.noaa.gov[1] today, and came across this incredible map of California from 1857[2]:
There's tons of detail here I spent a while pouring over, but one feature in particular stuck out: Tulare Lake[3]. A massive lake in the San Joaquin Valley I'd never heard of. Evidently it used to host the southernmost salmon spawn; Chinook salmon would swim up the San Joaquin river to the lake to spawn.
It dried up when settlers started building dams in the Sierra.
It's pretty incredible to discover these old features of the earth that have been completely erased. We think of lakes as these massive, dependable, immovable geographic features. And yet, with a bit of work, we can reshape the surface of the earth. Such is the history of water in California[4].
Last updated Tue Jul 26 2022 in Berkeley, CA
1: https://historicalcharts.noaa.gov
2: https://www.historicalcharts.noaa.gov/image.php?filename=Sen11-09-1857
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake
4: /thought/water-in-california.gmi
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