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The San Joaquin River is the longest river of Central California in the United States. The long river starts in the high Sierra Nevada, and flows through the rich agricultural region of the northern San Joaquin Valley before reaching Suisun Bay, San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean. An important source of irrigation water as well as a wildlife corridor, the San Joaquin is among the most heavily dammed and diverted of California's rivers. People have inhabited the San Joaquin Valley for more than 8,000 years, and it was long one of the major population centers of pre-Columbian California. Starting in the late 18th century, successive waves of explorers then settlers, mainly Spanish and American, emigrated to the San Joaquin basin, first exploiting then driving out the indigenous tribes. The newcomers quickly appropriated the rich natural and hydrologic resources of the watershed for use in farms and cities, but found themselves plagued by flood and drought. Because of the uniform topography of the San Joaquin Valley, floods once transformed much of the lower river into a huge inland sea. In the 20th century, many levees and dams were built on the San Joaquin and all of its major tributaries. These engineering works changed the fluctuating nature of the river forever, and cut off the Tulare Basin from the rest of the San Joaquin watershed. Once habitat for hundreds of thousands of spawning salmon and millions of migratory birds, today the river is subject to tremendous water-supply, navigation and regulation works by various federal agencies, which have dramatically reduced the flow of the river since the 20th century. ==Name== The river was called many different names; at times different parts of the river were known by different names. The present name of the river dates to 1805–1808, when Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga was surveying east from Mission San José in order to find possible sites for a mission. Moraga named a tributary of the river (it is not known which one) for Saint Joachim, husband of Saint Anne and father of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The name Moraga chose was later applied to the entire river; it was in common use by 1810.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Meaning Of The Name "San Joaquin" )〕〔Gudde and Bright, p. 337〕 In 1827, Jedediah Smith wrote in his journal that an unknown group of Native Americans called the river the ''Peticutry'',〔Hoover and Kyle, pp.89-90〕 a name which is listed as an official variant in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Geographic Names Information System.〔 In the Mono language, the river is called ''typici h huu, which means "important or great river."〔Sydney M. Lamb. 1957. (''Mono Grammar'' ). University of California. Berkeley PhD dissertation. .pdf〕 An earlier name for the lower section of the San Joaquin was ''Rio de San Francisco'', which was the name Father Juan Crespí gave to the river he could see entering the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from the south. A member of the Pedro Fages party in 1772, Crespi's vantage point was the hilltops behind modern San Francisco. Another early name was ''Rio San Juan Bautista'', the origin of which is unknown. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「San Joaquin River」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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