The Owens River is a river in eastern California in the United States, approximately 183 miles (295 km) long. It drains into and through the Owens Valley, an arid basin between the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and the western faces of the Inyo and White Mountains. The river terminates at the endorheic Owens Lake south of Lone Pine, at the bottom of a 2,600 mi2 (6,700 km2) watershed. In the early 1900s, the Owens River was the focus of the California Water Wars, fought between the city of Los Angeles and the inhabitants of Owens Valley over the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Since 1913, the Owens River has been diverted to Los Angeles, causing the ruin of the valley's economy and the drying of Owens Lake. In winter 2006, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power restored 5% of the pre-aqueduct flow to the river by court order, allowing the Owens River Gorge, the river bed in the valley, and Owens Lake to contain a small amount of water.
Course
The river rises in the Sierra Nevada in southwestern Mono County, approximately 15 miles (24.1 km) south of Mono Lake and 35 miles (56.3 km) east of Yosemite Valley. It flows southeast across the Long Valley Caldera, through Lake Crowley reservoir, then descends through the 20-mile-long (32 km) 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 14 miles (22.5 km) 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.
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 the northwest of the valley is the Long Valley Caldera, which is only a fraction of the size of the Owens Valley. The Owens River enters Owens Valley from the northwest, while the Spring Valley Wash drains the northernmost part of the valley, extending a tiny portion of the basin into Nevada. The river flows mainly on the east side of the valley, because alluvial deposits from Sierra Nevada streams have forced the river channel in that direction. Vertical relief in the basin is immense – elevations range from 14,505 feet (4,421 m) at Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States, to 3,556 feet (1,084 m) on the bed of Owens Lake. The Owens River itself heads at an elevation of 7,291 feet (2,222 m). Few people inhabit the sparse, open grasslands and steep mountainsides of the watershed; the 2009 population of Mono County was about 12,927 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 14,000 feet (4,300 m) and the floor of the valley at a comparatively low 3,000 to 4,000 feet (910 to 1,220 m), 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 30 miles (48 km) of the river run through the Long Valley Caldera, an enormous 20-mile-wide (32 km) crater formed by a volcanic eruption some 760,000 years ago. The eruption's resulting ash cloud covered much of the southwestern United States, including parts of ten U.S. states. 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. 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. During this relatively short time, the Owens River became part of a vast interior drainage system that stretched east to west, covering over 8,000 square miles (21,000 km2). During the runoff peak, water from this massive basin may have escaped to the Colorado River through a valley leading to the southeast.
History
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