Geography

Geography is the study of the land and its use by those who live on it. If you have ever taken a walk to school or in the hills you know about the importance of geography. Suppose that you are on a walk in the mountains. You may be hot and tired after the long walk. You wonder when the hills will stop and when you will get to coast downhill. This is geography! The surface of our county is mostly flat. It is good for bicycle riding because the only hills to climb are near Kettleman City and Avenal. The land in our county slopes very gently from north to south and from east to west.

In the southern part of Kings County is the Tulare Lake Basin. Tulare Lake was once big enough to fit the whole city of San Francisco in it. It was about twenty feet deep. It was formed by five rivers flowing out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These rivers had lots of water in them in the spring. All this water went into the lake. As years passed, the land around the lake became a farming area. Levees, or walls of earth, were built around the lake to hold back its waters. The land was planted with sugar beets, wheat, and barley. Farmers would race to harvest their barley before the floods set in. Many people worked together to build canals and more levees to control the flood waters. Gradually the lake became smaller and smaller. This left very rich farm land where once there was a lake. Tulare Lake is dry now because dams have been built in the mountains to hold the water from the melted snow. The Kings and Kaweah Rivers no longer flood it. Farmers grow cotton where ships once sailed. Did you know that once a man sailed a boat from Tulare Lake all the way to the Ocean at San Francisco?

Now you may have a picture in your mind about what the land in Kings County is like. It is flat up to about Avenal where the Kettleman Hills rise to about 1,500 feet. The rest of the land is only about 200 feet higher than the level of the sea. Beyond our county to the east are the foothills, then the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Mount Whitney, one of the tallest peaks in the United States is in these mountains just east of us.

Kings County is near the middle of the San Joaquin Valley. You can drive to the ocean or the mountains in less than half a day. You live near some of the highest mountains in the United States. Since we live in a valley, you know that there are mountains on each side of us. To the west there is the Coast Range. The Pacific Ocean is beyond these mountains.

We can tell that our valley was once a part of the Pacific Ocean. We can be sure of this because we can find fossils and old seashells in the ground. One of the best places to find these seashells is near Avenal.

Resource: The Kingdom of Kings - 1963
Gerald L. Jacobus, Kings County Superintendent of Schools
Jay Clark, Project Coordinator

Written, complied and published by the Office of the Kings County Superintendent of Schools in cooperation with the County Curriculum Council, and teachers, administrators, and members of the communities of Kings County.