Kaweah River, CA

The Kaweah River in the U.S. state of California flows 32 miles (51 km) westward from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada into the Central Valley. It rises in forks in the southern Sierra Nevada inside Sequoia National Park, the longest of which is the Middle Fork, about 18 miles (29 km) long. Once it exits the 8,000-foot (2,400 m)-deep canyons that make up its headwaters, the river flows into a reservoir called Lake Kaweah, where most of its water is stored for irrigation and flood control. Formerly the river continued southwest to empty into Tulare Lake, the terminal sink of an endorheic basin also including the Tule and Kern Rivers as well as southern distributaries of the Kings. Agricultural development and diversion for irrigation have left most of the Kaweah's lower course dry, as is Tulare Lake.