Kaweah River

Kaweah River
The Kaweah River above Terminus Dam
Map of the Kaweah River watershed
Location
Country	United States
State	California
County	Tulare County
Physical characteristics
Source	Confluence of Middle Fork and Marble Fork
• location	Sequoia National Park, Sierra Nevada
• coordinates	36°30′53″N 118°48′7″W / 36.51472°N 118.80194°W / 36.51472; -118.80194[1]
• elevation	2,012 ft (613 m)[1]
Mouth	San Joaquin Valley
• location	Near Visalia
• coordinates	36°20′12″N 119°13′23″W / 36.33667°N 119.22306°W / 36.33667; -119.22306[1]
• elevation	357 ft (109 m)[1]
Length	33.6 mi (54.1 km)[2]
Basin size	1,523 sq mi (3,940 km2)[2]
Discharge
• location	near Three Rivers, above Lake Kaweah[3]
• average	554 cu ft/s (15.7 m3/s)[3]
• minimum	12.6 cu ft/s (0.36 m3/s)
• maximum	80,700 cu ft/s (2,290 m3/s)

The Kaweah River is a river draining the southern Sierra Nevada in Tulare County, California in the United States. Fed primarily by high elevation snowmelt along the Great Western Divide, the Kaweah begins as four forks in Sequoia National Park, where the watershed is noted for its alpine scenery and its dense concentrations of giant sequoias, the largest trees on Earth. It then flows in a southwest direction to Lake Kaweah – the only major reservoir on the river – and into the San Joaquin Valley, where it diverges into multiple channels across an alluvial plain around Visalia. With its Middle Fork headwaters starting at almost 13,000 feet (4,000 m) above sea level, the river has a vertical drop of nearly two and a half miles (4.0 km) on its short run to the San Joaquin Valley, making it one of the steepest river drainages in the United States.^[4]: 378 Although the main stem of the Kaweah is only 33.6 miles (54.1 km) long, its total length including headwaters and lower branches is nearly 100 miles (160 km).^[2]

The lower course of the river and its many distributaries – including the St. John's River and Mill Creek – form the Kaweah Delta, a productive agricultural region spanning more than 300,000 acres (120,000 ha). Before the diversion of its waters for irrigation, the river flowed into Tulare Lake, the usually dry terminal sink of a large endorheic basin in the southern San Joaquin Valley, also fed by the Kern and Tule Rivers and southern branches of the Kings River.

The Yokuts and Western Mono are the main Native American groups in the Kaweah River basin, which was explored by the Spanish in the early 1800s and heavily logged after the 1850s by American colonists, before its upper reaches became part of Sequoia National Park in 1890.