Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Tulare, CA

Tulare was founded in 1872 by the Southern Pacific Railroad as its San Joaquin Valley division headquarters, and it is still remembered as the town the railroad built.

Tulare is named after Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes, which itself took its name from the tule rushes that lined its marshy shores.

The Yokuts people fished Tulare Lake in reed boats for centuries before the railroad town existed.

Tulare burned down and was rebuilt three times in its first fourteen years before finally incorporating on April 5, 1888, with about 3,250 residents.

When the Southern Pacific moved its headquarters to Bakersfield in 1891, Tulare's citizens formed the Tulare Irrigation District and issued $500,000 in bonds to build canals carrying Sierra Nevada water to local farms.

Tulare had a population of 68,875 at the 2020 census, and Census QuickFacts counts about 20,898 households for 2020-2024, averaging a large 3.38 persons per household, with about 58.5% of homes owner-occupied.

Every February, Tulare hosts the World Ag Expo at the International Agri-Center, the largest annual agricultural exposition of its kind, drawing more than 100,000 visitors and around 1,200 exhibitors from dozens of countries.

Tulare sits in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, about 8 miles south of Visalia, and Tulare County is the top dairy-producing county in the United States and one of the largest agricultural economies in the nation.

Portuguese immigrants from the Azores Islands settled around Tulare in the early 1900s and built many of the dairies that still define the local economy.

Tulare serves as a gateway city for travelers heading to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in the Sierra Nevada.