Tulare, Return of the Phantom Lake (2025)

A glimmer of hope. A touch of possibilities. Add a dash of a perspective dating back thirteen-thousand years, season with torrential rains, and the result is Tulare–Return of the Phantom Lake, produced 2025, running time seven-and-a-half minutes.

One of the difficulties when completing a film is knowing when to start and when to stop—and when to continue filming new developments and another chapter?

From the beginning of my filming for Tulare, The Phantom Lake, I had an intuition that the Lake would return, perhaps even return in the form of lake restoration as a reservoir for farming, a wildlife refuge, and a recreational haven. Instead, the powers that be keep insisting on dam construction when to my eyes the dry Tulare Lake bed beckons.

One of the themes I continue to think about with my film work is how the same piece of the earth can mean different things to many different people. Sometimes it seems as if they’re not even describing the same patch of land. As Eileen Apperson said in the film Tulare, The Phantom Lake, how you see the land depends on your intentions for that land.

Tulare, Return of the Phantom Lake is a seven-minute that film told in the words of Archaeologist and Author, Jerry N. Hopkins. As you’ll see, how Jerry views the landscape of the Phantom Lake is very much different from those who farm the Tulare Lake Basin.

In 2023, heavy rains in California led to the flooding of the Tulare Lake Basin. How could I not film the expanse of water that filled the old lake? Using footage from the original filming combined with new footage, I was able to give a brief overview of Tulare Lake’s history and show the expanse of the flooded water.

As I read through the complete transcript of Jerry’s footage, I found a note to myself about how great it would be to make a “DVD Extra” featuring Jerry. Seems like DVDs are becoming more and more a thing of the past. But, after all these years, here’s the DVD extra I had been wanting to make.

Please take a look at Tulare, The Phantom Lake from the four-part Valley and the Lake series for a more complete understanding of the Tulare Lake Basin in California’s Central Valley, as well as the other three parts on the series.

Tales of the San Joaquin was another film whose unfolding story required additional filming over the years. With that film, I vowed to myself, I would stay with the story, if necessary, paying for the filming out of my own pocket—which is what happened—until the first wild salmon returned to the San Joaquin River. You’ll have to watch TALES OF THE SAN JOAQUIN RIVER to see if I kept my promise.

BEHIND THE SCENES — FILM NOTES

I filmed all the live action footage you’ll see in RETURN OF THE PHANTOM LAKE , some of which was shot using an iPhone.
For THE RETURN OF THE PHANTOM LAKE, I would like to give special thanks you Chuck Williams who took me on a day-long tour of the Kings River, the largest river that flowed into Tulare Lake—a day well spent, along with Chuck’s hunting dogs and Chuck’s perspective on the need to protect and preserve our natural heritage.

As always, thank you for watching and let me know what you think.