Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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Bee Balm is a wonderful flowering perennial with big attractive blossoms that attract hummingbirds and butterflies to your garden. Also known by the genus name, Monarda, and as Oswego Tea, Horsemint, or Bergamot, this plant was used medicinally for hundreds of years by Native Americans for its strong antiseptic qualities. It is also valued for use as a tea, and during the period of the Boston Tea Party, colonists reportedly switched to drinking Oswego Tea rather than paying import tariffs on...
When you hear the name of the Kern County city of Ridgecrest, do you immediately think to yourself: "Ah, that's near all the rock art." No? Well maybe you should, because the nearby Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake is home to the Coso Rock Art District, the largest concentration of prehistoric petroglyphs in all of the Northern Hemisphere. There are an incredible 100,000 individual rock carvings or more etched into the dark basalt boulders of the Coso Range, some of them believed to be...
When Bud Lutge first started coming to Tehachapi in 1936, in many respects it was like another world from the Tehachapi of today: there were only about 1,000 people living in town and perhaps two hundred more in all the outlying areas combined, just a few roads were paved, and Bud's father Harry Lutge owned a 1,200-acre cattle ranch that stretched from Highline Road all the way up Water Canyon and encompassed the small lake and all the property now belonging to the Norbertine Associates of St....
“The prehistoric evidences of past races found in this region are worthy of some description. . . In the vicinity of Tehachapi there are numerous and varied remains and evidences of ancient Aztec civilization. . . One of these ditches leads to a silver-bearing ledge, where shafts had been sunk, and from the bottom of which drifts ran in different directions, showing that the aborigines had mined here for the precious minerals in the days of old. This old mine was rediscovered by the Narbeau b...
"We moved to Tehachapi in winter, and I expected it to be cold, but what really made me realize that we lived in the mountains now was the fact that I needed a light jacket to watch the July 4th firework display." – Carol Landers...
“Broke is what you get when you let yer yearnings get ahead of yer earnings.” – Cowboy Wisdom...
"We didn't have any electricity when we were living up at the Mendiburu Ranch (south of Highline Road, in what is now Mountain Meadows). In the summertime, my Dad would hang up an evaporation refrigerator on the north side of an outbuilding. It had some wooden shelves that had wire around them, and then burlap hung down all around the outside. We had a bucket that we set up on the top, and water would drip out of the holes in the bottom and keep the burlap damp. As the water evaporated, it...
"It's a smile, it's a kiss, it's a sip of wine ... it's summertime!" – Kenny Chesney...
“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” – George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones...
“Corn should be a foot high by the Fourth of July.” – Old American Farm Saying...
Among the best-represented genera of plants in Kern County are the lupines, who number an amazing 25 different species within Kern's 8,172 square miles. The smallest member of this large group of related plants is the Pygmy-leaved Lupine, which grows and spreads its subtle beauty throughout the Tehachapi area. These common wildflowers are low growing, ranging in height from four to ten inches, but despite their diminutive size they are an important component of our spring displays for two...
As you leave the Tehachapi Valley headed east on Highway 58, you approach the Sand Canyon area. Visible to your left, on the north side of the freeway before you get to the Sand Canyon exit, a large boulder sits all by itself. This oddly-placed stone did not tumble down from the hills above, and it wasn't left there by a glacier. Boulders can be carried hundreds of miles by glaciers, and when the glaciers finally melt, these stones, known as glacial erratics, are stranded far from the bedrock...
Spring can arrive slowly and leave quickly in the mountains of Southern California, so it's nice to have a variety of spring-blooming bulbs, shrubs and perennials to help celebrate this all-too-brief season. One ornamental shrub that likes Tehachapi and lights up in spring is Forsythia, a graceful plant that is covered with yellow blossoms when longer days trigger the onset of blooming. Forsythias are primarily native to Asia and were imported to England and Europe to the delight of Western...
There are two clocks in Downtown Tehachapi that stand in mute testimony to disasters that befell the town in years past. One of these can be found in the Tehachapi Museum at 310 South Green Street. This clock, which had kept perfect time, was brought to a sudden and final stop in the early morning hours of July 21, 1952. . . The large clock hung in the front window of the Tehachapi Radio Electric store on Green Street, about where Petra Mediterranean Café is today. In the predawn Monday...
Wet, bountiful winters like we've just experienced benefit the irruptive wildflowers that bloom in profusion, like annual California Poppies, Hillside Daisies, Goldfields, Popcorn Flowers, and more. But generous water deliveries in the form of rain and snow are also helpful to perennials, of course – those hardy plants that persist year after year through freezing winters and long dry summers. One of the most beautiful and interesting of these perennials found in the Tehachapi Mountains is not a...
If you visit the Tehachapi Depot Museum, you will encounter references to "the Stokoe Collection" and to Bill Stokoe, the man who gathered much of the assorted railroad memorabilia that is on display there. The late Bill Stokoe was, in a sense, the father of the depot museum. He was also a cherished friend of mine, and I'd like to tell you more about him and his remarkable life. Bill was a longtime signal maintainer for Southern Pacific Railroad and a lifelong railroad man. He installed 15...
"Quieten'it down in the back of the bus! If you don't behave, I'll stop this bus right here and put you off, and you can find your way home the best way you know how." – Betty Matthews Betty was a bus driver and later transportation supervisor for the Tehachapi Unified School District who used this threat to get rowdy boys to behave. She never actually removed a student mid-route....
"Novice falconers are only allowed to catch a Red-tailed Hawk or a Kestrel, which are the most common raptors in the Tehachapi Mountains, and the reason that they are encouraged to catch a wild bird is so that if mistakes are made in the training or if the bird escapes, it will know how to hunt for itself and will simply revert to a wild state." – Kelley Kemp...
“Who’d give a dime to see a piss ant eat a bale of hay?” – Rodney Meter Auctioneer Rod of Lancaster Sales Yard would slip this into his patter if he couldn’t get a bid on an item....
“There is a day to cast your nets, and a day to dry your nets.” – Traditional Fisherman’s Saying...
“No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” – David O. McKay...
“Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two.” – Sign on a desk This sentiment indicates that a customer can get their job done good and fast, but it won’t be cheap; fast and cheap but it won’t be good; or good and cheap but it won’t be fast....
“Tootie would go with her mother and brothers to stay with her Dad, who worked as a miner in Randsburg. I lived in Tehachapi and didn’t have a car, so I’d walk to Randsburg to see her.” – Hooks Anderson Hooks started dating his wife, Tootie, when he was 17 and she was 15. It’s 60 miles to drive from Tehachapi to Randsburg, slightly shorter as the raven flies or the lovesick teenage boy walks. Hooks and Tootie were married for more than 65 years....
"I began collecting insects when I was only seven or eight years old. My parents were very indulgent of my interest in bugs. Once when we had company, a woman was performing a piano recital when a large hornworm that I had caught crawled slowly across the top of the piano as she played. Fortunately, she didn't see it." – Ed Sampson Ed Sampson was an entomologist and the owner of the Mourning Cloak Ranch on Old Town Road, and approximately 5,000 different species are represented in his vast i...
The Tehachapi Mountains can be a challenging place to garden. Many of the plants carried in chain stores or purchased out of town and brought to Tehachapi don't thrive here. California native plants tend to have a much better success rate, and you can get some of them locally at an upcoming plant sale held in conjunction with Earth Day on April 22. The Tehachapi Resource Conservation District is announcing the return of their annual Native Plant Sale for 2023. A variety of California...
