Course
The Kern River is the southernmost river in the San Joaquin Valley. It begins in the Sierra Nevada on the eastern side of Tulare County and ends on the west side of Kern County where it is mainly diverted for local water supplies. The main branch of the river (sometimes called the North Fork Kern River) rises from several small lakes west of Mount Whitney in the high Sierra Nevada mountains in northeastern Tulare County, in the northeast corner of Sequoia National Park. It flows south through the mountains, passing through Inyo and Sequoia national forests, and the Golden Trout Wilderness. The Little Kern River joins from the northwest at a site called Forks of the Kern.
At Kernville the river emerges from its narrow canyon into a widening valley where it is impounded in Lake Isabella, a reservoir formed by Isabella Dam. The area was once known as Whiskey Flat, the former location of the town of Kernville. The South Fork Kern River joins in Lake Isabella. Like the North Fork, the South Fork rises in Tulare County and flows mainly south, through Inyo National Forest. After entering Kern County the South Fork curves to the west and flows into Lake Isabella.
Below Isabella Dam the Kern River flows southwest through a spectacular rugged canyon along the south edge of the Greenhorn Mountains, emerging from mountains east of Bakersfield, the largest city on the river. In the Kern's lower course downstream from Bakersfield the river is highly diverted through a series of canals to irrigate the farms of the southern San Joaquin Valley and provide municipal water supplies to the City of Bakersfield and surrounding areas. In this region near Bakersfield the Kern River once spread out into vast wetlands and seasonal lakes.
The Friant-Kern Canal, constructed as part of the Central Valley Project, joins the river about 4 mi (6.4 km) west of downtown Bakersfield.
The Kern River is one of the very few rivers in the Central Valley which does not contribute water to the Central Valley Project (CVP). However, water from the CVP, mainly the Friant-Kern Canal, will be deposited for water storage in the aquifers.
Historically, the river flowed an additional 20 mi (32 km) south through a now-dry distributary to Arvin, where it formed the seasonal Kern Lake, which would grow to cover about 8,300 acres (3,400 ha) during wet periods. Water from Kern Lake would then flow west through Buena Vista Slough into Lake Buena Vista, another seasonal lake that reached sizes of about 4,000 acres (1,600 ha). Another channel of the Kern River flowed from the Bakersfield area southwest directly to Buena Vista Lake. In periods of high runoff, Buena Vista Lake overflowed and joined other wetlands and seasonal lakes in a series of sloughs that drained north into the former Tulare Lake, which would sometimes overflow into the San Joaquin River via Fresno Slough, forming one of the longest river systems in California at 535 mi (861 km).
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