Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt

through the Schmidt Family Foundation working toward a healthy,

resilient, secure world for all. On the web at the Schmidt.org. In eastern California, there's a valley with two names.

It's traditionally known as Payahunadu, a Paiute word. But when white settlers arrived, they gave it a different name, the Owens Valley.

The Sierra Nevada Mountains tower over the valley, snow-capped and majestic, and a river runs through the middle, a river that has changed the entire course of the American West.

Earlier this year, we sent Thruline producer Anya Steinberg to this valley to see it for herself

and learn the story of what happened here.

I'm Ram Tin Arablui and I'm R Rundabdal fatah. And from here, we're handing it over to Anya.

I finally made it.

After six hours of gripping my steering wheel,

winding around mountain roads so precarious that I almost made myself car sick.

I am in the Owens Valley and today is going to be

a scorcher. This is the creek at the park. So I'm spending a few precious last seconds in the

shade while I wait to meet up with someone who's lived here for most of his life.

Hey, morning. Good how are you? Noah Williams pulls up in a white SUV and hops out.

He's a member of the Bishop Paiute tribe and works as a water program

coordinator for the Big Pine Paiute tribe, two of the tribal nations in the valley.

Okay. Cool, you ready?

Yeah.

Puyahunadu, the Paiute name for the valley, translates to the land of the flowing water.

But looking around me in the dusty morning sun, it's hard to see how it got that name.

But this one's a little bit harder to see.

...