The Friant-Kern Canal was completed in 1951 as part of the Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project (CVP), a water transportation system that extends from the headwaters of the Sacramento River near Redding, California to the Kern River in Bakersfield, California. The canal is a primary component of the CVP, transporting water southward by gravity flow from the Friant Dam at the San Joaquin River near Fresno, California to the Kern River. It was designed to serve approximately 1 million acres of agricultural land through sixteen irrigation districts located on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley in Fresno, Kings, Tulare, and Kern counties.

The Friant-Kern Canal was determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places due its contributions to the history of water conveyance systens and engineering. The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) was created for the canal in preparation for the Friant-Kern Canal Middle Reach Capacity Correction Project, which was a major construction project started in 2021 to restore canal capacity lost due to land subsidence.