Owens River

The river rises in the Sierra Nevada in southwestern Mono County, approximately south of Mono Lake and east of Yosemite Valley. It flows southeast across the Long Valley Caldera, through Lake Crowley reservoir, then descends through the Owens River Gorge, emerging at the north end of the Owens Valley northwest of Bishop. In the area around Bishop, it is diverted through many ditches to irrigate the surrounding farming region. It flows south-southeast through the Owens Valley between the Sierra Nevada on the west and the White and Inyo Mountains on the east, past Big Pine. Approximately south-southeast of Big Pine, most of the remaining river is diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913 to supply municipal, recreational and agricultural water to Los Angeles. The remaining river flows through the southern valley, flanked by the Los Angeles Aqueduct, past Lone Pine, entering the lake bed of predominantly dry Owens Lake at the southern end of Owens Valley.{{cite web ==Watershed==

The river flows through two major valleys of the extreme southwestern Great Basin – the Long Valley and Owens Valley. The north to south drainage basin is in portions of Mono and Inyo counties and terminates in the now-dry Owens Lake. to on the bed of Owens Lake. while Inyo County had some 17,293 inhabitants. The largest city on the river is Bishop, with a population of just under 4,000. Other significant towns include Lone Pine (population 2,035), Big Pine (population 1,707), and Independence (population 669). ==Geology==

The Owens River flows through part of the Basin and Range Province of North America's Great Basin. The Owens Valley is a graben or rift valley, a section of land that has dropped down between two parallel faults, while the land on either side has risen. This has resulted in the flat floor and steep, towering walls of the present-day valley. With the Sierra Nevada on the west side and the Inyo Mountains and White Mountains on the east, with the highest peaks of either range rising to over and the floor of the valley at a comparatively low , the Owens River flows in one of the deepest valleys in the United States. Further to the north, the Owens River basin encompasses predominantly igneous rocks and vast remnants of past volcanic activity. The upper of the river run through the Long Valley Caldera, an enormous crater formed by a volcanic eruption some 760,000 years ago. Mammoth Mountain, to the southwest (more popularly known as a major ski area) also formed from eruptions related to the Long Valley Caldera. To the north of the Caldera, extending to the Mono Lake area, lie the chain of Mono-Inyo Craters, which range in age from 400,000 to 500 years old.{{cite web During the Pleistocene at the end of the last glacial period, melting glaciers in the Sierra Nevada and Inyo/White Mountains fed prodigious amounts of runoff into the Owens River, causing it to expand to many times its current size. The increased river volume caused Owens Lake to rise as well, eventually spilling out the south side of the valley into the Mojave Desert. Ancient, now-abandoned river channels suggest that the extended Owens River ran south to China Lake, then east into Searles Lake, north into the Panamint Valley (where it formed Panamint Lake), and finally east into Death Valley and the ancient Lake Manly. This great inland sea was also fed by the Mojave River from the south, the Amargosa River from the east, and the Death Valley Wash from the north.{{cite web ==History==

For thousands of years the Owens River valley was inhabited by the seminomadic Owens Valley Northern Paiute and the Shoshone tribes of Native Americans. The indigenous name for the river was Wakopee, while they called Owens Lake Pacheta. In the upper Owens Valley lie traces of some of California's first irrigation systems, created by Paiute groups to water small patches of crops. It is believed that native people in the upper portion of the valley once built dams across the Owens River (and possibly one of its major tributaries, Bishop Creek) to divert water into local canals. The switch from a hunter-gatherer to a settled, agricultural lifestyle is probably the result of the climate of the Owens Valley becoming drier some 1,000 years ago. The valley never accumulated a very large population, but mining activities brought significant income to the new inhabitants of the area. In 1872, the Lone Pine earthquake killed 27 people in the Owens Valley, mostly in Lone Pine. ==Ecology==

Beaver was re-introduced to the Owens Valley by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1948 in Baker Creek, and has since spread throughout the Owens Valley. Although it is controversial whether beaver were once native to the Owens Valley, there is growing evidence that they were native to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. In particular, the northern Paiute of Walker Lake, Honey Lake and Pyramid Lake have a word for beaver ''su-i'-tu-ti-kut'-teh''. When Stephen Powers visited the northern Paiute to collect Indian materials for the Smithsonian Institution in preparation for the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, he reported that the northern Paiute wrapped their hair in strips of beaver fur, made medicine from parts of beaver and that their creation legend included beaver. Supporting this line of evidence, Tappe records in 1941 an eyewitness who said beaver were plentiful on the upper part of the Carson River and its tributaries in Alpine County until 1892 when they fell victim to heavy trapping. In 2011, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) decided to trap beaver (Castor canadensis) out of the Owens Valley, claiming that beaver are damming flows into their diversions of water to Los Angeles. This decision runs counter to an independent assessment commissioned by LADWP and the Inyo County Water Department in 1997, where it was recommended that beaver be maintained in reasonable populations and their dams left in place because "Although beaver activity has resulted in the removal of much willow and other shrub and woody vegetation and the dams create favorable tule conditions and reduce fish spawning habitat, they also provide important fish rearing habitat, mesic meadows, and promote the growth of other riparian species. It is most likely that the physical removal of beaver dams will result in more adverse environmental impacts than environmental benefits." Water rights controversy The acquisition of water rights for the Los Angeles Aqueduct under the direction of William Mulholland was highly controversial and led to violence and sabotage by local residents in the 1920s. The diversion of water and the subsequent desiccation of Owens Lake remains highly controversial, and the restoration of the lake has been a long-time goal of the California environmentalist community.{{cite news ==See also==