About the town » Tulare, Tulare County, California, United States

Tulare is a city in Tulare County, California, United States. The population was 59,278 at the 2010 census. Tulare is located in the heart of the Central Valley, eight miles (13 km) south of Visalia and thirty miles northwest of Porterville, and is considered part of the Census Bureau's designation of the Visalia-Porterville Metropolitan Area. The city is named for the currently dry Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes. The city's mission statement is: "To promote a quality of life making Tulare the most desirable community in which to live, learn, play, work, worship and prosper. " The Stockton seaport is 170 miles away, and the Sacramento port is 207 miles away. The Los Angeles and San Francisco ports are each approximately 200 miles away, making Tulare a hub or central location for product movement. Despite this, the expression "out in the tules (toolies)", referring to the tule rush plant that lined the lakeshore, is still common in the dialect of old Californian families and means "beyond far away."