Canebrake Ecological Reserve is a 6,700-acre (27 km2) nature reserve in the South Fork Valley of Kern County, 20 miles (32 km) east of Lake Isabella, California. It is located in the Southern Sierra Nevada region. Historian Wallace M. Morgan, in History of Kern County, California, wrote that the South Fork Valley was the first area settled around 1846, and described the valley as "a fertile strip of bottomland that forms the most important of the mountain farming districts." The first acreage purchased for reserve was part of the 129-year-old Bloomfield Ranch.