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The Kaweah River () is an approximately -long river in the U.S. state of California. It rises in four major forks in the Sierra Nevada within Sequoia National Park, flowing southwest through the Lake Kaweah reservoir and onto an alluvial plain northeast of Visalia. Formerly the river continued southwest to empty into Tulare Lake, the terminal sink of an endorheic basin in the southern Central Valley. However, the river is heavily diverted for irrigation water, and its lower reaches are dry for most of the year. The foothills of the Sierra around the Kaweah River were once inhabited by the Yokuts people. The name "Kaweah" is thought to mean "crow" or "raven cry" in the Yokuts language. Shoshonean people from the Great Basin later settled in the high valleys of the Kaweah's forks. In the 1870s, a short-lived silver boom took place in the Mineral King valley of the river's East Fork, attracting settlers to the region. The majority of the Kaweah's headwaters above the Central Valley became part of Sequoia National Park in 1890. The southeastern part of the river's watershed also became part of the park in the 1970s after a failed proposal for a massive ski resort. The Kaweah River is now a popular destination for hiking, fishing and whitewater rafting. ==Course== The Kaweah River rises in the southernmost part of the Sierra Nevada and flows southwest into the dry endorheic basin of the southern San Joaquin Valley, as do the Kings, Tule, and Kern Rivers, which all begin in or near Sequoia National Park. There are five primary forks to the Kaweah River: the Middle Fork, East Fork, North Fork, South Fork and Marble Fork, ordered by size. The Middle Fork, the largest tributary and sometimes considered the main stem of the Kaweah River, rises at about elevation along the Great Western Divide, fed by multiple lakes, springs and seasonal snowfields. The river flows west through a canyon, past Moro Rock and paralleling State Route 198, more commonly known as the Generals Highway (the main road through Sequoia National Park). The highway crosses the river between the confluence with Paradise Creek and the Marble Fork. It receives the Marble Fork from the right, forming the Kaweah River proper. Further downstream it receives the East Fork from the left near the town of Three Rivers. The river continues southwest to the confluence with the North Fork from the right and the South Fork from the left just above Lake Kaweah, the reservoir formed by Terminus Dam. Below the dam, the Kaweah receives Dry Creek from the right then curves south past the town of Lemon Cove entering the San Joaquin Valley. Cottonwood Creek joins from the right and Yokohl Creek from the left. At McKay's Point Diversion Dam, the distributary St. John's River splits off from the Kaweah and flows west while the Kaweah continues southwest. About downstream, Deep Creek splits off to the south, before the Kaweah itself splits into Packwood and Mill Creeks, flowing through the city of Visalia. The water in these forks are largely consumed by irrigation of over of farmland in the region around Visalia known as the Kaweah Delta. Formerly, the main channel of the Kaweah River continued southwest, joining with the Tule River and emptying into the Tulare Lake bed in the southeastern San Joaquin Valley. In high water years, the lake would rise enough to empty into the San Joaquin River and thus the Pacific Ocean. Although dams and diversions have largely prevented the river from reaching Tulare Lake since the 1960s, it does reach the lake bed in extremely wet years, such as in 1997. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kaweah River」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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