Tulare Lake, water storage, restoration, history, Native Americans, drought, irrigation, Lloyd Carter, Eileen Apperson, Mark Grewal

Completed 2022
(Learn more and purchase at Green Planet Films: https://bit.ly/4fQEvMr )

What was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River disappeared more than a 100 years ago due to water diversion and land reclamation for agriculture. As we meet a series of people living in and around the old lake bed, Tulare – The Phantom Lake raises sometimes unsettling, unresolved questions about what was gained and what was lost in the process.

This video is part of THE VALLEY AND THE LAKE – a four-part film odyssey focused on water issues, conflicts, and hopes in California’s Central Valley, the breadbasket of the world and also the most human-altered landscape on the planet.

For a while after I finished an earlier version of the San Joaquin River film than in this collection, I felt as though I could see into the future.

As I researched the San Joaquin River, I came upon Tulare Lake, south of the San Joaquin River the vanished lake, the phantom lake, the subject of this film. By studying and filming the San Joaquin River, I began to understand that California had entered a stage of perpetual drought.

At the same time, one aspect of climate change, a warming planet, would reduce the ability of California's largest reservoir, packed snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains, to hold water that could be allocated year-round for people and crops. In a sentence, California is consuming more water than can be replaced.

One possible, helpful solution: rather than build more dams, restore Tulare Lake as a natural reservoir, which would include environmental restoration, water storage for agriculture, and recreational use all at the same time.

After learning all of this and following the attacks on me and my film, Tales of the San Joaquin River, I will admit that I didn't know what to do. I was threatened financially and professionally.
The PBS station in the heart of the Central Valley, located in Fresno, was pressured to withdraw their offer to show the film. The station refused with two provisos. First, following the broadcast, they would broadcast a panel discussion about water issues and secondly, I could not physically be present in Fresno.

One of my mottos as a film producer is that I refuse to be defeated. I have always been intrigued by hidden cities and vanished civilization. The image of a vanished lake stayed in my thought. I finally said to myself that I would climb back on the horse after being thrown and make a film that showed the future I had begun to see. That is the film you're about to watch.

I found foundations that would provide support to make a film about Tulare Lake and the "resilient" people in the Central Valley: Fred Gellert Family Foundation, Christensen Foundation, Panta Rhea Foundation, and the Polaris Fund. The rest would come out of my pocket whenever I could afford to film.

I felt that I'd found my vanished landscape and my purpose in what had was now the vanished Tulare Lake, at one time, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi.

To experience more about Tulare Lake, I highly recommend Pattern of the Land: The Search for Home in an Altered Landscape by Eileen Apperson, who appears in Tulare, The Phantom Lake, available on Amazon.

I also recommend another film I directed, with Diana Fuller producing and editing by Maureen Gosling: Once Was Water about water conservation in Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas turns out to be one of the leading water conservation cities in the world. One Was Water can be found at: https://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/oww.html