Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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The Lehigh Hanson cement plant has been the employment anchor of Tehachapi life for more than 100 years. Three generations of some local families have worked at the facility. The Los Angeles Board of Public Works built the original cement plant to provide construction material for the Los Angeles Aqueduct that carries water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles. Aqueduct project manager William Mulholland sited the plant at Monolith at the foot of the Tehachapi hills near deposits of high-grade...
An 1881 children's book shows that the concepts of diversity, compassion and tolerance are not modern inventions. Forde Files found a water-damaged children's book titled "Chatterbox," edited by British Anglican clergyman Erskine E. Clarke. The book contains stories of kindness and loyalty as well as intriguing items about foreign lands. A poem and illustration called "Gilbert sewing a Frill on Dora's Frock" cries out for understanding toward a boy whose inclinations run counter to the notion...
Major improvements to the train track that climbs up Tehachapi Canyon -- including double tracking and new sidings – are eliminating choke points and enabling longer trains to navigate the winding, steep route. "The project alleviates bottlenecks and creates fluidity along the section," Sacramento-based Union Pacific spokesman Justin Jacobs told Forde Files. Union Pacific owns the track, and BNSF (formerly Burlington Northern Santa Fe) has trackage rights. The improvements are a combined p...
The Tehachapi high school and middle school mountain bike team captured top Division 1 honors at the Southern California (SoCal) High School Cycling League final race of the year, April 29-30 at Lehigh Trails in Tehachapi. The Tehachapi team placed third overall for the SoCal 2017 series. The top two SoCal teams for the season were Newbury Park High School, 1st, and Redlands High School, 2nd. Darrin Mason, head coach of the Tehachapi Mountain Bike Team, described Tehachapi's results as...
One thing the 28 organizations represented at Tehachapi's April 26 Non-Profit Showcase at Jacobsen Middle School gymnasium have in common – in addition to the free chocolate and pens at the booths – is the donation of thousands of hours of time. Volunteers from the organizations donate their time training service dogs, working with children, feeding the hungry, staffing the Tehachapi, Depot or Errea House museums, running service clubs, scheduling hikes to Tomo Kahni State Historic Park, rai...
The Friends of the Tehachapi Depot (FOTD), a volunteer non-profit group that manages the Tehachapi railroad depot and museum, has proposed the construction of a viewing platform overlooking the railroad Loop. The proposed platform would be built adjacent to the two historical markers that stand on a curve of Tehachapi Woodford Road, five miles from Keene and seven miles west of Tehachapi. "It's such a beautiful site," Keith Sackewitz, vice president of the Friends of the Tehachapi Depot and...
Director Christal Wheeler's Tehachapi Community Theatre production of "The Best of Broadway," now playing at the BeeKay Theatre, is wonderful family entertainment that merges a diverse cast of 28. Children and adults work together to present musical numbers from six Tony-winning Broadway shows: "Kiss Me Kate," "Hello, Dolly!" "A Chorus Line," "Les Miserables," "Rent" and "The Producers." "Everybody is having fun," Wheeler told Forde Files. "We teach the children what theatre is and the adults...
When South Street Digital owner Lydia Chaney walked into Tehachapi City Hall with two cardboard boxes on March 15, the city's Economic Development Coordinator Michelle Vance whooped and ran to open one of the boxes. She triumphantly held up a newly printed colorful tri-fold brochure. "It's the trail map! The mountain bike trails! The Tehachapi Mountain Trail Association (TMTA) brochure is a guide map of winding, sometimes angular loops of pathway that mountain bikers and other volunteers...
California City planners are reviewing 60 building permits submitted by medical marijuana growers who seek to build hydroponic facilities in the city "We want to get away from special taxes," Cal City Mayor Jennifer Wood said at the Mar. 9 meeting of the East Kern Economic Alliance at the Mojave Air and Space Port. "If this industry does it for us, that's it." She said that city personnel have researched the marijuana growing industry and visited facilities, and that city planners have been...
The California State Old Time Fiddlers Association Amateur Fiddle Contest Mar. 11 at Carden School cafeteria was all about the youngsters 19 and under and the joy of making music. Judges Patrick DeLuca, Leslie Schoenberg and Jo Stone listened to presentations by the juniors, the junior-juniors, the pee wees, cello and bass, twin fiddles, novelty, picking and the band scramble, where players team up in groups to compete. Following the fiddling all day? Jamming just for fun! Shown, photos of the...
Another lake appears – Just as Surprise Lake in the lowlands of Bear Valley appears infrequently, a lake has arisen like Brigadoon in the lowlands of Sand Canyon (photo right). The lake is a catch basin built 50 years ago to irrigate potato crops at the bottom of the canyon. "That's the story I have heard, anyway," said Richard Cantrell of the Quail Valley Water District, which does not own the property or the lake. The lake got so high in the usually dry basin this year that water flowed o...
The weather web site mountainbase.com, based at Oak Knolls in Golden Hills, reports that the total rainfall for the first two months of 2017 at that site measured 9.52 inches. The rainfall came during two major storms, one on Jan. 5 and another on Feb., 17. The heavy storms damaged the dirt roads of eastern Sand Canyon, leaving them eroded, severely creviced and impassable. As they have done before, the residents worked together to fix the roads, which now are in good shape. They attacked the...
Nasty, nasty, nasty – Kern County Public Health Services Director Matt Constantine’s Feb. 14, 2017 report to the Kern County Board of Supervisors on the dangers of Spice, a synthetic marijuana substance, was an eye-opener. The substance corrodes the brain and destroys young lives forever. There’s no coming back from the devastating effects of this substance, which people continue to manufacture, even knowing the deadly effects. They sell the drug cheaply in brightly colored packets (see photo...
At full build-out, the California High-Speed Rail (HSR) will have stations in eight of the 10 largest cities in the state, including Bakersfield and Palmdale. While Tehachapi does not meet the criteria for "big," the proposed track alignment through the Tehachapi Valley leaves open the possibility that one day a station could be built to serve the Tehachapi community. "We plan for the future. We made sure the alignment is long and straight," Project Manager Juan Carlos Velasquez told a crowd of...
The new Tehachapi hospital at 1100 Magellan Drive appears ready to open its doors and save lives... but there's more to be done before the official opening in the third quarter of 2017. Some remodeling of the hospital pharmacy is taking place to meet new California hospital building codes, and the complex process of licensing will take months....
Beware scams – Evil people use “social engineering” to scam you. At the Feb. 1 meeting of the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council, Greater Tehachapi Chamber of Commerce President Ida Perkins distributed a reprint from the Security Awareness Newsletter by James Lyne that explains how scammers fool people. “Cyber attackers have learned that often the easiest way to steal your information, hack your accounts or infect your systems is by simply tricking you into making a mistake...
Off they go... The parade of construction trailers that have been a fixture at the Replacement Tehachapi Critical Access Hospital site at Capital Hills since February, 2013 are being removed as the contractors move on to other jobs. Project Manager SHP Project Development's report to the Jan. 17, 2017 Tehachapi Healthcare District board of directors meeting at 305 S. Robinson St. states that construction is complete. The city of Tehachapi Planning and Building & Safety final inspections are...
Got medals – Jim Arnold, co-owner of Triassic Legacy Vineyard, reported that their wine had won four medals in the prestigious San Francisco Chronicle 2017 wine competition – gold for their Big Bang Red blend and silvers for their 2013 Zinfandel, 2015 Voignier and 2015 Voignier Oak. Pioneer wine growers Bob and Patty Souza of Souza Family Vineyard, who have won nine medals in major competitions, did not enter this year's Chronicle event. Their 2011 and 2013 Primitivos were not ready, Patty Souza...
With the Sierra snowpack high and rainstorms washing over California, water availability has taken a dramatic turn. Over a period of 10 days recently, the statewide snowpack rose from 63 percent of normal to 161 percent of normal, Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District General Manager Tom Neisler said at the Jan. 18 board of directors meeting at the Golden Hills Community Services District board room. Neisler called the impact of the ensuing abundance of water on statewide infrastructure "unpr...
A comprehensive healthcare assessment in the Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District service area shows that the community needs better access to primary health care. "That's the number one need – access to primary care," district CEO Eugene Suksi said at the Jan. 17 board meeting at the new office at 305 S. Robinson Street. According to the study, barriers to healthcare access arise from income (the underlying causes of health disparity being elderly poverty, child poverty and single-parent p...
Chabad of Bakersfield lights public menorah in Tehachapi Chanukah (also spelled Hanukkah) is a happy eight-day Jewish celebration of the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian Greek army in 165 BCE. The opposing army had left the temple in Jerusalem a wreck, breaking the jugs of holy oil, and only one day's worth of undefiled lamp oil could be found. The lamp miraculously burned for eight days until more holy oil could be installed. Rabbi Shmuli Schlanger of the Jewish outreach organization...
Five years of tough negotiating by California legislators has resulted in the inclusion of provisions in a new federal infrastructure Act that will give drought-devastated, environmentally hamstrung Central Valley farmers relief at last. Senate bill 612, the “Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act” (WIIN Act), which the Senate approved 78-21 on Dec. 10, 2016 and President Obama signed on Dec. 16, includes a section devoted specifically to California. The section mandates that wat...
Two snowstorms blanketed the Tehachapi area like holiday bookends a week apart at the tail-end of 2016 -- one starting just before Christmas Eve morning and one on New Year's night, ushering in both festive days on a palette of dazzling white. Rather than being light and dry and forming a winter-long base, the Tehachapi area snow typically is wet and, in the absence of sustained freezing temperatures, melts quickly. According to the weather web site Mountainbase.com, located at Oak Knolls in...
The new Tehachapi hospital will open when the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) says it can open. "There is no exact day," David Eastman of Adventist Health, the hospital operator, said at the Jan. 4, 2017 meeting of the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council. "The best estimate is the second half of this year." Eastman said there is a time lag between the time the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) signs off on the building with a Certificate of...
When Jim and Cheryl Wilson were ready to retire and leave Anchorage, Alaska to be closer to his children and grandchildren in the Lower 48, they knew the kind of a city in which they wanted to live. "We wanted a small town with no freeways," Cheryl said. "It would be a town we could embrace and would hopefully embrace us back." Jim went on a reconnaissance tour. "I gave it all to Jim," Cheryl said. "He respected the fact that it would be difficult for me to leave Alaska." Southern California is...
