Lake Corcoran

Common card · No. 360818

Lake Corcoran (also known as Lake Clyde, after Clyde Wahrhaftig, an American geologist) was an ancient lake that covered the Central Valley of California. The lake existed in the valleys of the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River, at least as far north as the Sutter Buttes and present-day Zamora, California. If so, it might have had a size comparable to Lake Michigan. An alternate view presumes that the lake covered only the southern parts of the Central Valley. The total surface covered by the lake amounts to about 30,000–50,000 square kilometers (12,000–19,000 sq mi). Buena Vista Lake, Kern Lake and Tulare Lake are remnants of Lake Corcoran. The lake is the source of the Corcoran Clay, a lacustrine unit of the Tulare and Turlock Lake formations. It also influenced sedimentation off the coast of California. The lake existed between about 758,000 and 665,000 years ago. Clay deposition rates indicate that the lake lasted for 50,000 to 100,000 years, and it underwent about 15 dry...

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