Jesse D. Carr was one of the many Salinas area landowners who reclaimed his land from the swamps and sloughs in the early 1910s.  Carr did not drain all of his land at once, however.

In the 1920s he sold his acres to a Japanese family, who finished reclaiming the soil.  They tilled the tule grasses that grew there, and tuned the acreage into prosperous strawberry fields; later they grew lettuce and salad greens.  The descendants of this family, the Ikedas, the Hibinos, and the Higashis, still own and work nearly 500 acres of the original basin at the heart of the City of Salinas.

Two roads, Laurel Drive and Highway 101 bind the eastern and western portions of the basin; houses line the edges of the northern and southern sides.  The basin is can isolated portion of agricultural land cut off from the rest of the Salinas Valley by urban development.

The upper left map shows the historic system of lakes that dotted the Salinas Valley proior to the 1900s.  In 1910, construction of the reclamation ditch drained these lakes and created productive lands for agriculture.  Upon completion, the reclamation ditch ultimately drained 8 lakes and 157 square miles of land between Salinas and Castroville.  The reclamation ditch flows from Carr Lake into the Tembaldero Slough and ultimately drains into the Monterey Bay at Moss Landing.

Click the bottom left map to see how urban Salinas has grown and continues to grow around the 480 acres of Carr Lake.