Kern Lake EarthCache

Earthcache at posted coordinates. Please send me a message with your answers after posting your "found it".

If you were standing here 100 years ago, you would be in the middle of Kern Lake.

Kern Lake, originally Laguna de los Tulares, was the smallest of the three large lakes in the Tulare Basin.

In times when Buena Vista Lake overflowed it first backed up into Kern Lake making one large lake. When this larger lake overflowed it flowed out through the Buena Vista Slough and Kern River channel northwest of Buena Vista Lake through tule marshland and Goose Lake, into Tulare Lake.

Kern Lake met a much earlier demise than Buena Vista lake when in the late 19th Century the Kern River was largely diverted to Buena Vista Lake through canals and levees. As the capacity of Buena Vista Lake increased, Kern Lake's fertile bed was exposed and utilized as precious farm land. Kern Lake would only see water again when the east bank of Buena Vista Lake failed in 1907 and despite the efforts of hundreds of workers, the ensuing flood filled the farmland, farms houses, and equipment of Kern Lake once again.

By the time this map above was published in 1912, you can see Kern Lake was just a fraction of what it once was. This earthcache's Gound Zero (GZ) is at the southwest corner of what little lake was left. Studying the map and modern satellite images, you can see the intersection of Herring Road and this farming road leads north to the Kern Island Canal. The shape of the Kern Lake was enclosed on the north by the Kern Island Canal and on the south by the Petersdorff Canal which both canals still exist and show the shape of the lake to this day.

In order to mark this cache as found, please send me a message answering all of the questions below.