Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Sorted by date Results 126 - 150 of 356
"We spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about." – Prof. Tim Jackson...
“When people who had never heard of Tehachapi would ask where it was, I’d tell them ‘We’re about halfway between Keene and Monolith.’” – Mark “Wally” Waddell...
“A good laugh and long sleep are the two best cures for anything.” – Irish Proverb...
"The night Prohibition was enacted in 1919, there were 13 saloons and only two churches in Tehachapi, and the church people said the town had gone to hell. Now there's about two bars and 30 churches in Tehachapi, and the drinking people say the town has gone to hell." – Herbert Nelson Force Herb Force, one of the first and most dedicated historians in Tehachapi, made this observation in the 1970s....
"We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason." – Edward R. Murrow...
U. S. Postal Service: "State the names of other post offices near the proposed one in Tehachapi, their directions and distances from it by the most direct roads." Answer: "There are none unless it be San Bernardino which is 100 miles and Kernville about 70 miles." – P. D. Greene This was the answer Peter Greene wrote down in 1868 when filling out an application to have a post office in the Tehachapi area – the building itself was at Oak Creek, where Oak Creek Road from Mojave joins Teh...
"When I was growing up in Tehachapi, we could hike and explore all over this place, on both sides of the mountains. We could go out and be gone for four or five days. Me and all four of my brothers were Warriors, competing on the different sports teams. I love Tehachapi, that's why I moved back here. We lived in Lancaster for 20 years while I worked at National Cement, but my wife Liz and I always figured we'd come back." – Charlie Hernandez...
Under blue Tehachapi skies, a creek chuckled and splashed as it flowed, newly-invigorated by recent rain and snow. A Northern Flicker flashed the bright orange underside of its wings as it swooped from an oak tree, and a Red-tailed Hawk circled slowly overhead, sharp eyes watching the activity below. At the ground level, hundreds of baby plants were being carefully tucked into the soil to start their lives as a future woodland. This was the scene recently as a team of volunteers was busy...
The Tehachapi Mountains are home to at least six species of tree oaks and perhaps that many shrubs oaks as well. Oaks are one of the defining characteristics of many local landscapes. The biggest of these are Valley Oaks, which can grow into massive, living sculptures with pale, deeply furrowed bark, a rugged framework of craggy, angular limbs and a spreading canopy of green lobed leaves. The fate of our largest native oak trees, the Valley Oaks (Quercus lobata), can be compared to that of the...
January weather in Tehachapi can be snowy, windy and extremely cold, or it can be sunny and mild with temperatures in the 60s. Some of the strongest (and at times competing) influences on Tehachapi weather are these two realities: one is that we are in the mountains at 4,000 feet above sea level, which brings rapidly changeable weather, low temperatures and occasional snow; the second is that despite our elevation we are still in Southern California, albeit on the northern edge, which brings...
Since the Tehachapi Mountains can get very cold in winter, and we usually have snow, you may wonder if any creatures in our area hibernate to avoid the coldest months. Let's look at how local animals cope with the cold. Black Bears are well-known for hibernating, at least in areas with severe winters, but the picture is more complicated in an area with mixed or open winters like Tehachapi. The term "open winter" refers to areas that get snow and cold, but may also have much warmer periods...
When most people think about Tehachapi and fruit trees, the first type that comes to mind are apple trees. This is appropriate, since fine quality apples have been grown in the Tehachapi Mountains since some of the first settlers planted apples here in the 1850s and 1860s, but honestly there are easier choices for home gardeners. Apples are vulnerable to an insect pest known as the coddling moth (the worm in the apple), and you usually have to do something to control them -- commercial...
If you want to learn more about the Native Americans of the Tehachapi Mountains, the first two things to do are this: visit the Tehachapi Museum, and also pick up a book called Handbook of the Kawaiisu. This unique book was a life accomplishment of a remarkable Nuwä elder named Harold Williams. Harold was a leading tribal member of the Nuwä, the Tehachapi Indian people, and he realized a longtime dream with the 2009 publication of Handbook of the Kawaiisu, a book he co-authored with a...
If you drive east out of Tehachapi on Highway 58, then head north on Highway 14, the very first waystation or pit stop of any kind that you'll encounter will be one you won't forget: the Jawbone Canyon Store, a Kern County original for 60 years. This little desert oasis has offered a variety of supplies and a good sense of humor since the gas station first opened on July 28, 1963. For many years it was owned by Richard "Bonk" McKendry, a colorful character who was once married to the famed...
One of the ways that I know California has been locked in an ongoing drought is that fact that I often dream about a winter and spring that are green and lush and verdant. It can seem hard to imagine now, but there are years when the Tehachapi Mountains are home to lots of seasonal creeks that are flowing with water, beautiful water. . . . The year 2011 was one of those years, when the rains and snows kept coming, recharging reservoirs, springs and aquifers. It seems so long ago now, but I remem...
Venture into the higher elevations in the Tehachapi Mountains, about 5,000 feet and higher, and you will eventually encounter one of our most common conifers: the White Fir. These handsome trees have beautiful green foliage, a dense symmetrical appearance and a delicious, apple/citrusy aroma. They smell just like Christmas trees, because they are Christmas trees – the tree species that Santa most often leaves the gifts around are White Fir, Noble Fir, Douglas Fir and other members of the f...
"Cho'ikizh! Cho'ikizh!" The Nuwä Indian woman heard the familiar call as she sat under a hava kahni (shade house), a square, open-sided shelter made of willow poles and topped with a thatching of leafy willow branches. As she sat in the welcome shade on a warm summer morning, weaving a basket with her skillful fingers, the piya (mother) again heard the sound: "Cho'ikizh! Cho'ikizh!" (cho-EEK-izh). This was not a human calling out, it was a Western Scrub Jay, making one of the raucous calls for...
One of my favorite aspects of living in the Tehachapi Mountains is how vibrant and tangible the changing of the seasons can feel. The weather, the angle of sunlight, the temperatures, the plants and animals. . . they all shift and pulse seasonally. The longer you live here, the more expected and predictable these patterns are. Right now, we're in the golden days of autumn, and this is partly due to one of the most significant flowering events of the year in the Tehachapi Mountains: the annual...
Kevin Cousineau didn't just participate in the early days of wind energy development in California, and Tehachapi in particular – he engineered it. With no degree in engineering, this highly intelligent and resourceful man nonetheless designed some of the vital electronic components inside wind turbines that enable them to be reliable, and in the process he helped make wind energy a viable industry. Kevin grew up in Kennewick, Washington, in the southeastern portion of the state near the border...
Dae Lantz Jr. and his wife Jean were married in Oklahoma in 1949. Dae's father, Dae Lantz Sr., was a rancher who owned property in Independence and in 1947 he had bought a ranch in Cameron Canyon, east of Tehachapi. Dae Sr. invited his son to come work as his ranch foreman in Cameron, so the newlyweds packed up and headed west to the Tehachapi Mountains. With them came a splendid registered collie that Jean had bought with her own money when she was 17. Named Lady Taffeta, the dog had cost $25,...
In any lake, reservoir or pond where water stands year-round in the Tehachapi Mountains, or this part of California in general, sooner or later there will appear a plant that is important to waterfowl and other aquatic species and was of great significance to Native people: the tule, also known as Hardstem Bulrush (Schoenoplectus acutus). Tules are a type of giant sedge that is found in marshlands all over the West. The long round stems are dark green and grow from three to ten feet tall, with...
With Homecoming this past week at Tehachapi High, it's a good time to remember lifelong Tehachapi resident Terry Edwards, who earned the title "Warrior of the Century" and the "Ultimate Warrior" after he achieved a milestone that will likely never be equaled by anyone else: he attended 413 Warrior football games in a row without missing a single one for more than 30 years, from 1980 until he passed away at the age of 80 in 2014. Terry's incredible streak of Warrior fandom began with a game...
One of the most familiar and charismatic residents of the Tehachapi Valley was a man named Ed Tompkins, whose name is still very much with us: Edward L. Tompkins Elementary School on Curry Street was named for him. After living a long and happy life, Ed died at the age of 92 on May 5, 2012 in his sleep in Anderson, California. Because few of the people whose children attend Tompkins Elementary know much about the school's remarkable namesake, allow me to tell you more about him. Ed was friendly...
Mary Gassaway was born in the tiny village of Elizabethtown, Illinois by the Ohio River on September 15, 1915 to Oscar and Mary Weaver. She had three siblings -- Sarah, Harold and Albert. Her father, Oscar, was a commercial fisherman and a Pentecostal preacher who caught catfish and bass with seine nets, and the family lived on a houseboat on the river. When Mary was about 12 years old, the family moved to Van Buren, Missouri, located by the Current River, and when he wasn't working, her father...
For most people, the initials "PJ" are an abbreviation for pajamas, but for those involved with natural resources in the West, PJ is shorthand for Pinyon Juniper Woodland, one of the most widespread plant communities across a swath of the American Southwest. Pinyon Juniper Woodland covers an estimated one quarter of all of New Mexico, and is also found in extensively in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and parts of California. In our area, Pinyon Juniper Woodland is found in much of Sand Canyon,...
