Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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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....
Tehachapi Pass and Oak Creek Pass are known for being windy (hence all the wind turbines), which is typical of mountain passes. But the nearby desert town of Mojave has breezes that range from mild zephyrs to irrational blustery gales, and there are times when the wind never seems to abate. And it was the wind that once created a most unusual crop on a piece of desert land outside Mojave. Local residents called the patch of brush the "Hat Ranch" because anyone could go there and get any style...
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...
This is a traditional Nuwä (Kawaiisu or Southern Paiute) story that was told for centuries to explain the origins of the world. It was collected by a Berkeley anthropologist named Theodore McCown, who in the summer of 1929 spent three months studying Nuwä elders in the mountains of eastern Kern County. Among the people that McCown interviewed was Raphael Girado, who would later become the father of Luther, Betty and Lucille Girado, who were instrumental in documentation and the teaching of the N...
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...
Warren Johnson was a former publisher of the Tehachapi News, and he was also a local institution, since he had such an amiable personality. For decades he was the busiest joke-teller in town, and if you repeated a topical joke to a local, they were likely to respond "Oh yeah, I heard that one from Warren Johnson last week." Or if someone told you a funny joke or quip, they would add afterwards "I got that one from Warren yesterday." Warren was also a landlord, owning more than a dozen...
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...
C. Hart Merriam was an amazing naturalist and anthropologist of the late 1800s and early 1900s. He came through Tehachapi in 1905 because he was interested in the flora, fauna and Native culture. He kept careful notebooks of his observations, and these are some excerpts that focus on wildlife he saw in the Tehachapi Mountains. Merriam recorded these observations: "In Tehachapi Valley saw many Ravens everywhere, some meadowlarks, 2 Says Phoebe, 2 Northern Shrike, several Mountain Bluebirds & 1...
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....
