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.
The land on the former lakebed was later owned by Miller & Lux. The Miller heirs later sold the land to the J. G. Boswell Company.https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt238nb0f4&&doc.view=entire_text
Today Lake Webb and Lake Evans occupy the lakebed on the northern shore of the former Buena Vista Lake.George Gilbert Lynch, THE LATE, GREAT, BUENA VISTA LAKE, Historic Kern, Quarterly Bulletin, Volume 59, No. 3, Kern County Historical Society, Bakersfield, Fall - 2009
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.
Tulamniu Indian Site
On Buena Vista Lake south shores was the site of the Tulamniu Indians, who spoke Buena Vista Yokuts. The site is a California Historical Landmark number 374.
California Historical Landmark reads:
See also List of lakes in California California Historical Landmarks in Kern County California Historical Landmark
References
External links David A. Fredrickson, BUENA VISTA LAKE (CA-KER-116) REVISITED, This article originally appeared in Symposium: A New Look at some Old Sites, Papers from the Symposium Organized by Francis A. Riddell, Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for California Archaeology, March 23-26, 1983, San Diego, California. Coyote Press Archives of California Prehistory 6:75-81, 1986. Fishing In Lake Buena Vista, California LIVESTRONG.COM THE PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF THE 2008 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT THE BEAD HILL SITE (KER-450), BUENA VISTA LAKE, CALIFORNIA; AMBER BARTON, MARIA DEL CARMEN GUZMAN, AND BREEANN ROMO, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, BAKERSFIELD