Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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One of the most interesting of our local habitats to explore and to experience the outdoors is also one of the Tehachapi Mountains' most widespread and interesting: the oak woodland. This plant community is abundant in Central and Southern California, and found throughout the Tehachapis. Locally, it consists primarily of Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) and Blue Oak (Quercus douglasii) trees interspersed with Gray Pines, California Buckeyes, Mountain Mahogany, Buckbrush, Great Basin Sagebrush and a...
The Tehachapi Mountains have at least some snow every winter, but you can make sure that your yard has plenty snowballs even in drier years if you plant a Snowball Bush or two. These appropriately named shrubs produce large, globular white blossoms that do in fact resemble carefully crafted snowballs. In spring they are loaded with flowers, and they will bloom for weeks. There are a number of different species of Viburnum that are referred to as "Snowball Bush," including the European Snowball...
A fine and memorable man left the Tehachapi Valley recently with the loss of Ronald Wayne Depew, 74, who passed away at his Tehachapi home on October 25 following a brief illness. Ron was friendly, big-hearted bear of a man with great love for his family, friends, Tehachapi and life in general. He believed you could do a lot of good in this world and still have fun doing it. Ron embodied the Italian phrase "Vivere la dolce vita," which means "Living the sweet life." Ron spent his career in...
One of the hardiest and most ornamental vines you can plant in the Tehachapi Mountains is Virginia Creeper, an attractive plant that is native to the Eastern and Midwestern states. It is found in the wild as far west as Texas and Utah, but grows very well all the way to the Pacific states. It is known for its shiny, five-fingered leaflets that are bright green in spring and summer but then turn brilliant shades of red and burgundy in autumn. Virginia Creeper is a climber that can reach...
Now that our season has transitioned from summer into autumn, there is a subtle but definite difference in the sunshine that lights our days. The angle of the sunlight is lower. Our days are growing shorter, and the nights are colder. Change is in the air. This seasonal progression is reflected in the natural world around us. Some of the deciduous trees and shrubs have dropped their leaves, or they have turned red or yellow as the green chlorophyll drains out of them. These plants are already...
If you've glanced up in the skies over Tehachapi in the past month or so, you might have seen lots of large dark birds circling. These are Turkey Vultures, and their annual migration is one of the great natural spectacles of California. Each autumn, Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) come through Tehachapi Pass as they migrate south. There are not just hundreds, or even thousands of birds, but tens of thousands – a Turkey Vulture count in the fall of 2000 recorded 38,743 Turkey Vultures flying o...
The Butterfly Bush is a great shrub for the Tehachapi area, and true to their name, they really do attract butterflies, as well as moths and other nectar feeders. They bloom from midsummer to fall and have a wide variety of blossom colors, including purple, blue, white, pink, red, violet and yellow. Butterfly Bush blossoms are fragrant and they work well as cut flowers, lasting inside for several days before they start to wilt. Some people mistake Butterfly Bush for lilacs because there is a...
One of the oldest still extant creatures on Earth is the intimidating-looking scorpion, those ancient arachnids who have somehow managed to persist through endless catastrophes and unimaginable changes to living conditions on our planet. Scorpions have been found throughout the fossil record, dating back an amazing 420 million years or more, which is long before the first trees appeared around 380 million years ago. Scorpions are among the first animals who adapted to life on land, and there...
Humans tend to rely most heavily on our sense of vision to navigate and experience our surroundings, assisted by our hearing. But another powerful ability is our sense of smell, and this olfactory perception can connect to some of our strongest, most primal likes, dislikes and memories. A scent that matches ones in our memory can transport us to a place and time in our mind instantly, or evoke an association that seems elemental to our being. The smell of a cut pumpkin can immediately summon tho...
The Tehachapi Mountains are blessed with scenic landscapes, picturesque wildlife, interesting weather and four distinct seasons. But in addition to these natural features, one of the treasures of our area has always been its people, and one of the true diamonds is a wonderful lady named Patricia Gracey, who will turn 95 on September 2 of this year. Pat Gracey was raised in Tehachapi and is a historian of our area, writing the Spirit of Tehachapi column for The Loop and writing in other...
“The people of this part of the county are very hopeful and appear to be alive to the prosperous future that cannot possibly escape them.” – Tehachapi Visitor This statement was taken from a letter written to the Havilah Miner on December 28, 1872, by a man who had just traveled through the Tehachapi Valley and offered this opinion of its residents....
"Have fun, Wini, and don't dig up anything you wouldn't be proud to bring home." – Joan Johnson Joan offered this cheerful advice to her friend Wini Hammond Hurst when she was getting ready to spend a month in Peru, assisting on an archeological excavation with Antelope Valley College professor Roger Robinson....
"Each evening, I would take all of the money we had made that day at the Monolith Store, and I would put in it a hat and take it into the back room. Then I would throw the money up in the air as hard as I could, and all the money that stuck to the ceiling was the government's, and everything that floated back down was Ed's." – Ed Tompkins Ed Tompkins, longtime owner of the Monolith Store, explaining (jokingly!) how he used to compute sales tax at the store....
“Your vocabulary is mean and impoverished, but entirely adequate to express your thoughts.” – English Professor This was a University of Tampa English professor’s response when asked to review an example of a student’s writing....
"I used to break horses for Joe Mendiburu, he'd gather horses from the desert and I'd get 'em trained so you could ride them. The hardest ones to work with, though, were from the Fickert Ranch in Bear Valley. They'd geld colts and then turn 'em loose on 25,000 acres, and then years later they'd round them up, tie a saddle on 'em and expect you to crawl up on them. That was hard work – those horses hadn't seen a man in years." – Ramon Burgeis...
"Look, my fave-rett – a booful purple fala!" – Kaylee Lambert Kaylee said this when she was three years old, since she always loved a "booful fala" – beautiful flower....
“I don’t know if I would have survived some of the things I’ve been through in my life if I didn’t have my guitar. It’s helped me through my darkest, loneliest times. I don’t always know what to say, but I always know what to play.” – Ian “Bluesman” Bispo...
There is a species of gentle snake found throughout the Tehachapi Mountains, a familiar reptile with alternating light and dark rings the length of its sinuous body. Though it is non-venomous, and doesn't seem very imposing, this snake is actually the undisputed ruler of the local reptile world, as so has been given a regal name: the Kingsnake. California Kingsnakes (Lampropeltis californiae) are typically fairly long, slender snakes with narrow heads that are not much larger than their bodies....
Hollyhocks are one of the few ornamental flowers that naturalize so well in the Tehachapi Mountains that they can thrive without any care or supplementary watering -- you can often see beautiful examples of them growing on roadsides, vacant lots or other neglected areas. They are among the first flowering species to have been cultivated in gardens, and there are references to them in literature that date back hundreds of years. They are considered one of the prime choices for traditional...
Tehachapi has a long history of having outside dances in the Downtown area, and that tradition is going to be renewed with this year's "Green Street Get Down," held in conjunction with this year's Tehachapi Mountain Festival. The dance will be on Saturday, Aug. 19 from 6 to 10 p.m. on Green Street, and admission is free. Three different bands will perform over the course of the evening: Soda Crackers, Muleskinner Revival and Three Bad Jacks. Food, beer and wine, and merchandise will be available...
There are two events that have occurred every August for many decades in Tehachapi. One is the annual Tehachapi Mountain Festival, typically on the third weekend in August, and the other is the Tehachapi Oldtimers Reunion, held on the first Sunday in August. The Oldtimers Reunion is open to people who have lived in the Tehachapi area for at least 40 years, and also to anyone who lived here 40 years ago or more, even if they moved away long ago. It's a chance for people who don't get to see each...
It is now High Summer in the Tehachapi Mountains. After a very cool spring and early summer, high temperatures have finally caught up with us, and reached about 98 or 99 degrees Fahrenheit here over the weekend of July 15 and 16. Not record-setting, but still definitely hot. The hottest official temperature ever recorded in July in Tehachapi was in 1934, when the mercury reached 105 degrees. That is also the hottest temperature ever recorded here, according to National Weather Service archives....
I've enjoyed seeing a couple of pairs of California Quail (Callipepla californica) that were hanging around the houses and outbuildings of our old farm last month, calling to each other with the classic quail phrase that's heard so often throughout the Tehachapi Mountains: "Come-back-here!" or "Ca-KERR-cow!" These quail pairs leisurely make their way up the dirt driveway and adjacent grassy areas in the middle of the morning, unhurriedly pecking at seeds and small insects. Songbirds, by...
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...
