18 Facts About Tuolumne River

The South Fork of the Tuolumne joins from the south a few miles downstream, near Groveland-Big Oak Flat, followed by the Clavey River from the north a few miles after that.

The North Fork of the Tuolumne River joins from the north near the upper end of Lake Don Pedro, which was formed in 1971 when the New Don Pedro Dam was built to provide hydroelectricity and irrigation water storage.

Tuolumne River watershed can be divided into three distinct physiographic regions.

Melting ice feeds the upper reaches of the Tuolumne River, maintaining water flow in the late summer when many other streams in the region are dry.

Since the introduction of large-scale agriculture the Tuolumne River course has been fixed between an extensive system of levees.

Related searches

The rivers whose watersheds border that of the Tuolumne are the Stanislaus River and West Walker River in the north, the Merced River in the south, the East Walker River to the northeast, the Mono Lake basin to the east, and the headwaters of the San Joaquin River proper to the southeast.

The primary land use in the lower Tuolumne River watershed is agriculture, but there are significant urbanized areas.

Tuolumne River once supported large spring and fall runs of chinook salmon and steelhead trout .

The Yokuts lived along the lower Tuolumne River and were not known to venture up into the Sierra during summer.

Many of the landscapes in the Tuolumne River area encountered by the first European explorers were thus not pristine but the result of hundreds of years of management; indeed, the famous meadows of Hetch Hetchy Valley prior to its damming only existed because of the annual burn.

Tuolumne River was the scene of significant gold mining activity during the California Gold Rush.

Parts of the route they established eventually formed the Walker Tuolumne River Trail, regarded as one of the more difficult of the main Sierra crossings.

The town of Tuolumne City was founded near the mouth of the Tuolumne as a port, but it soon became apparent that mining debris had made the river unsuitable for navigation, and the area was abandoned.

Construction on the first Don Pedro Dam began in 1921 to store floodwaters of the Tuolumne River proper, allowing for the extension of the irrigation season and to provide water during dry years.

Tuolumne River watershed receives over a million recreational visits each year, primarily to the protected wilderness areas of Yosemite National Park and to the difficult but popular whitewater on the Main Tuolumne and Cherry Creek.

Tuolumne River is considered a classic California whitewater run, and has been used recreationally since the 1960s.

Clavey Tuolumne River, not being located in the national park, is open to public access, but due to its remoteness and difficulty, and the short window of boatable spring runoff, it is only run by a handful of kayakers each year.

Tuolumne River received the Wild and Scenic Rivers designation in 1984.