Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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It was late August, 1966 on a very hot afternoon when my husband and I pulled into Tehachapi for the first glimpse at our new community. In Colorado earlier that summer we had interviewed with the Tehachapi Unified School District superintendent about teaching jobs in Tehachapi. Yes, he said, they needed a math teacher at the junior high, and yes, he said, Tehachapi has skiing and fishing very close, and yes, it is the top of a mountain pass. We signed our contracts with eagerness and excitement...
A fire at Bear Mountain destroyed much feed and valuable timber. The fire started near Sycamore last Saturday and was not under control until late Tuesday afternoon. Many sections of dry feed on the west side of Bear Mountain were destroyed, the loss falling almost entirely on F. W. Fickert. The fire fighters experienced many hardships during their three strenuous days and nights on the mountain, often without food or water for many hours at a time and sometimes surrounded by the roaring,...
I lived in Cummings Valley with my family. I was born on my Grandfather Ocana's ranch on December 21, 1907. My Dad was Anselmo Campos and he was a cowboy for the Hill Ranch. When we went to visit family in Bakersfield, we went in a wagon over the Sheeptrail. You could make it in a day if you wanted to – a long day. We didn't have a radio – we didn't even know what one looked like. My family had a Victrola with one of those big horns on it. Then they had those little rolly things [wax cyl...
Small footsteps crunch on the surface of the snow. The young face looks up at the house, and a little hand reaches skyward. A larger hand stretches towards the eaves, breaks off a thin tapering spike of ice and gives it to the smiling child, who promptly starts eating it. Our affection for icicles starts at an early age. Icicles, nature's water-flavored popsicles, are actually quite rare in natural world, but are common among human habitation in colder climates. Icicles typically form on steep...
When I was around 11 years old a lady moved in next door to us. I became friends with her oldest daughter, who was my age. When Christmas got close we found out they weren't going to get a tree. A single mother with three kids, times were hard. Daddy went out and bought presents for all of them. He even bought a record player for them so the mom would get something that she could enjoy. On Christmas Eve Thrifty would sell all their display artificial trees, fully decorated, for around $5.00. Lat...
There's a group of regulars who come into Kelcy's twice a day at about 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. I call them the "Board of Directors." It started with Boyd Lehman and Harold Rouse in 1961 or 1962, when it was still Trusty's Cafe. Then they started bringing in Chet Gilbertson, who owned The Rock Shop on Tehachapi Boulevard. Over cups of coffee, they'd discuss Tehachapi history, politics, their families and news of the day. And the group grew over the years. It's good to see them all. They're good friends...
At about 10 a.m. on April 13, 1992, a backhoe operator working on the City of Tehachapi's new sewer line on Dennison Road accidently tore through a telephone trunk line, cutting phone service for every single resident of the Ashe Village (formerly known as Ashe Tract) neighborhood north of the railroad tracks. Pacific Bell construction splicers Lonnie Latham, Mike Mattucci, Charlie Lunn and Jimmy Womack were dispatched to fix the massive problem, and arrived at the site at about noon to...
Short, cold days and long frosty nights. When the sun went down, the land grew dark. There were no lights anywhere, except the occasional flickering glow of a small campfire. The stars overhead glittered in the black sky. The nights were quiet, but not silent. Coyotes could often be heard as they yipped and barked, and sometimes wolves would raise their muzzles towards the sky and their mournful, descending wails would echo from the hills. This is the time of year in the Tehachapi Mountains...
“Louie Boden was a lawman in Tehachapi for 36 years, from 1915 until his death in 1951. He relied on his physical strength and popularity alone. He was our constable and he was a big, barrel-chested man. He was really strong, but he was kind-hearted and everyone loved him – he was probably one of the most popular men in town. He often chewed on a cigar as he made his rounds. “He was once called to break up a fight between two Marines at a bar on Tehachapi Boulevard, near where Kelcy’s is now....
We liked to have our chickens be able to roam around our property. One of our roosters disappeared and we didn't see it for a few days. I figured something must have happened to it since he had disappeared. Then I went to move a plastic five-gallon bucket that was sitting upside down. I lifted the bucket and that chicken was underneath it. It had gotten in there, probably pecking at grain or some food left while the bucket was lying on its side, and somehow straightened upright and wound up...
Newer Tehachapi residents who have wondered what it was like back in the old days, when there used to be more snow, don't have to wonder any more: our snowstorm on December 26 was like the winter storms that used to be a yearly occurrence. In fact, the speed of this snowfall would be exceptional during any year, past or present – we went from having no snow at all to having a foot and a half in less than 24 hours. Even in previous decades when we routinely got more snow, it would typically t...
I was involved in the early days of the California Condor Recovery program, prior to the capture of all the remaining birds in 1987 in a last-ditch (and ultimately very successful) effort to prevent their extinction. We suspected that lead poisoning was one of the leading causes of condor mortality, caused by ingesting bullet fragments from carcasses and hunter's gut piles. We wanted to take blood samples and check their lead levels, but there were only 22 birds in existence and the U.S. Fish...
My Dad was in the British Army during World War I. When he was only 19, he got captured by the Germans and taken to a military prison camp in Germany. It was newly built and had wooden barracks surrounded by barbed wire – like the camp in the old Hogan's Heroes television show, though that took place in World War II. My Dad hated being a prisoner and was constantly trying to figure out how to escape. One night when it was misty and kind of foggy he got his chance. He managed to wriggle his w...
While Tehachapi is rightfully known as the Land of Four Seasons, it could also be known as the Land of Lenticulars, since the formation of these distinctive, sometimes amazing looking clouds is a common occurrence in the Tehachapi Mountains. While headed out to Cummings Valley with friends late on Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 17, in the fading light we saw a huge lenticular cloud with a large completely circular hole in the middle of it. It looked like a giant round spacecraft had either gone up...
Actually, a first remembered Christmas for me, a member of the Davis Family, was in the desert town of Mojave with the famous strong winds hitting the house. That one action of the harsh, howling wind always made me, as a small child, feel quite secure in my warm bed with my parents nearby. There was a problem though because we had no fireplace for the jolly old elf, Santa, to make an entrance into our living room. The brick chimney atop our house connected to a wood stove, and that worried me....
I was up on a hilltop overlooking Hart Flat, cleaning up some branches and deadwood for firewood. It got dark and I could hear some coyotes calling, so I turned my headlights out and started making predator calls, making kind of a squeaking, whistling sound with my lips to see if I could call in any coyotes to investigate the sound. I had my flashlight out, and I held it close to my chest. I saw a barn owl take off and head towards a bald mountain ridge. I stood there and kept making that sound...
Our recent snow storm was unusual for several reasons: we seldom have a White Thanksgiving, so that in itself was remarkable, and three days of snow in a row is also a rare occurrence these days. But is it typical of Tehachapi winters? I'm glad you asked. . . Technically, December is more of an autumn month than a winter month, at least according to the calendar – winter doesn't officially start until December 21, meaning that December has 20 autumn days and only 11 winter days in it. In the T...
In 1892, Benjamin Harrison was president and John Wanamaker was Postmaster General. When Mr. Wanamaker had been in office 15 months, he invited several hundred Postmasters and Postmistresses from all sections of the country and representing all classes of Post Offices to come to Washington for three days to discuss how we can improve the postal system and service. The final night of the meeting, a banquet was held, and at the speaker's table were Mr. Wanamaker, President Harrison, Secretary of...
On Sunday, May 10, 1863, we got some breakfast at a house not far off in this miserable spot and then pushed on about 18 miles until we struck fine grass and good water and camped about noon. We crossed the ridge to Tehachapi (on your map Tah-ee-chay-pah) Pass. From the ridge we had a wide view out on the desert. The Tehachapi Valley is a pretty basin five or six miles long, entirely surrounded by high mountains and lies over four thousand feet above the sea. It is covered with good pasturage...
The young Nuwä woman trotted lightly along the slope, on a game trail that human steps had enlarged to a footpath. When she reached the top of the oak-dappled hill, she paused by an old leafy tree with weathered gray bark, its branches sturdy against the blue Tehachapi sky. As her experienced eyes took in the familiar landscape before her, she saw a large bird with outstretched wings circle towards her. Though the bird was a few hundred feet above the valley floor below, it was not far above...
About 15 years ago, commuters started noticing a black cow by herself in the big pasture east of town, between Highway 58 and Lehigh Cement plant at Monolith. The cow came to more people's attention when a reader wrote a letter that appeared in the Tehachapi News criticizing Kern County Animal Control officers for failing to respond to complaints about the cow's welfare. The letter writer felt that the cow should be provided with protection from the elements and took Animal Control to task for...
In 1975, the American Freedom Train came through Tehachapi Pass. It was pulled by a steam locomotive known as "Spirit of the West," Southern Pacific engine #4449. This engine went into service in May of 1940, and was the last GS-4 steam locomotive built – and the last one still surviving. It was put into service pulling the Coast Daylight trains, which were SP's prime passenger trains in California. Engine #4449 was one of the steam locomotives that were called "streamlined." There were about 5...
"1997 was a year when we had a lot more skunks than usual reported in Tehachapi – they were everywhere that year. We had them on Bamboo Court, Brentwood, Curry Street, around the high school, all over town. And even when people didn't report seeing them, they certainly smelled them. As the California Department of Fish and Game warden for the Tehachapi area said, "At the time, I had a lot of calls about skunks." People kept finding them in box traps that they had set for ground squirrels or c...
Despite the fact that we're now into November, the daytime temperatures are still warm enough that I'm still seeing lizards on a daily basis. These little reptiles are woven into the tapestry of life all throughout the Tehachapi Mountains, and there is at least one or more species found in practically every habitat type. California is home to about 70 different species or subspecies of lizard and about a dozen of these can be found within the Tehachapi Mountains. Some of these are familiar...
My parents used to own a store called Gil's Rock Shop on Tehachapi Boulevard (near the current location of Sheridan's Consignment). "The Rock Shop," as most locals called it, carried rocks and minerals, but also a variety of jewelry, fossils, lapidary tools and Indian artifacts. The store also had enormous vintage oil paintings of Western scenes hung high on the walls. The store was the dream of my Dad, Chet "Gil" Gilbertson, who was born in South Dakota and went to mining school in Minnesota...
