Buena Vista Lake

Buena Vista Lake
Buena Vista Lake Show map of California Buena Vista Lake Show map of the United States
Location	San Joaquin Valley Kern County, California
Coordinates	35°11′31″N 119°17′40″W / 35.19191°N 119.294557°W / 35.19191; -119.294557
Type	dry lake
Primary inflows	Kern River Connecting Slough
Basin countries	United States
Surface area	60 to 150 square miles (160 to 390 km2)
Average depth	3.3 m (11 ft)
Surface elevation	88 m (289 ft)
References	[1]

Buena Vista Lake was a fresh-water lake in Kern County, California, in the Tulare Lake Basin in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California.

Buena Vista Lake was the second largest of several similar lakes in the Tulare Lake basin, and was fed by the waters of the Kern River. The Kern River's flow went into Buena Vista Lake southwest through the site of Bakersfield via its main distributary channels or south through the Kern River Slough distributary into Kern Lake and then into Buena Vista Lake via Connecting Slough.

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.

Today Lake Webb and Lake Evans occupy the lakebed on the northern shore of the former Buena Vista Lake.^[2]

In June 2023, with 300% snow pack in the Southern Sierra Mountains, the Kern river started to fill the top section of Lake Buena Vista to a depth of only a few feet.

• Aerial views of Buena Vista Lake.
• Aerial views of Buena Vista Lake.