Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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I was running on a dirt road in the mountains near Tehachapi Mountain Park early one morning, about 6:30 a.m. I ran down a sloping stretch of road and around a corner and didn't see any deer or other animals. I reached the halfway point of my run and had turned around and was headed back up when I saw an animal in the road ahead of me, about 20 feet away. It was small and at first I thought it was a bobcat, but then I saw a long tail and realized it was a mountain lion, but it was just a baby,...
There is a remarkable native plant that can be found growing mostly unnoticed in the Tehachapi Mountains. It has several unusual qualities, and once you are aware of these, you are unlikely to forget it. It is known most commonly in our area as Coyote Gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima), though it has acquired numerous aliases. Among these are buffalo gourd, calabazilla, wild gourd, fetid gourd, chilicote, prairie gourd, wild pumpkin and more. The Mountain Lion is the animal credited with more differ...
For more than 30 years when the Johnson family owned the Tehachapi News, the newspaper was typeset each week on a monumental piece of equipment called a Linotype Machine, which was invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1884. This complex, 6,000-piece device revolutionized the printing industry by enabling type to be cast and stamped quickly, rather than laboriously set by hand, letter by letter. Setting type by hand took so long that prior to the invention of the Linotype, no newspaper in the...
For some people, their career and life trajectory seem almost predetermined, as they follow in their parents' footsteps or otherwise make predictable choices about their occupation. That wasn't the case with beloved Tehachapi physician Dr. Sam Conklin, 84, the next to the youngest of 12 children whose father was a carpenter and small farmer in the mountainous region of Eastern Pennsylvania. Sam worked in construction in Connecticut after he got out of high school, and as he admits, "I never...
I started playing piano when I was three years old, and played constantly after that. I was going to attend Pomona College Music Conservatory, but then my father was killed in a car accident when I was a senior in high school. After his death my brother started running away from home, and he was found dead in an orange orchard, apparently from pesticide poisoning. Then it was just my mother and I left, so I decided to continue living with her and enrolled at UCLA on my 16th birthday. I graduated...
One of Kern County's most strategically important fire stations is the little-known Keene Fire Station, located just off Highway 58 in the sleepy community of Keene, nestled in the Tehachapi Mountains. Kern has 48 different fire stations given numbers between 11 through 79, starting with Station 11 at Keene. So why would Station 11 be so significant, given that Keene itself is home to only a couple of hundred people at most? Because Keene is one of the main wildland firefighting stations, with t...
They say money talks, and they're right: it mostly just says, "Goodbye." – American Folk Wisdom...
"Ma'am, I have a powerful hankerin' to take you out to dinner if you ain't taken." – Hod Welden This is what Hod Welden of the Tehachapi Hay Company said when he first asked Jane Gibbons out on a date. She said yes, and she has happily been Jane Welden for more than 25 years....
"I'd always believed that a life of quality, enjoyment, and wisdom were my human birthright and would be automatically bestowed upon me as time passed. I never suspected that I would have to learn how to live – that there were specific disciplines and ways of seeing the world I had to master before I could awaken to a simple, happy, uncomplicated life." – Dan Millman...
"We're gonna have a hard time ever being happy if we aren't thankful for what we already have." – Jacob Sokol...
"That ceiling isn't glass; it's a very dense layer of men." – Anne Jardim Dr. Anne Jardim was one of the founding deans of the Simmons College School of Management, the first MBA program in the world focused on creating women business leaders, and she was referring to the "glass ceiling" that is said to limit upward employment opportunities for women....
"When you appreciate what you have, what you have appreciates in value." – Robert A. Emmons Robert Emmons is a researcher in the Department of Psychology at UC Davis who partnered with Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami to conduct research into gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life....
Among the most interesting insects to be found in the Tehachapi Mountains, or anywhere for that matter, are the translucent-winged dragonflies. Since dragonflies always lay their eggs in or near water, aquatic habitats are necessary for dragonflies. The dry Inland Ranges of California are not known for their abundance of aquatic habitats, of course, but dragonflies can often utilize small ponds, pools, seeps, etc. You can also find some adults quite a distance from any surface water. The...
My family, the Freemans, arrived in the Tehachapi Valley 140 years ago when my grandparents, Farmer and Susan Freeman, moved from Havilah to Tehachapi in the 1870s. The Freemans ran a small dairy located on Green Street, about where the former St. Vincent De Paul Thrift Store (and before that, Town and Country Market) was located. My grandmother would turn her cows loose after the morning milking, and they would wander down the canyon by the railroad tracks and eat the meadow grass. It used to b...
Among the most charismatic – and largest – wildlife in the Tehachapi Mountains are the American Elk (Cervus canadensis nelsoni) that can be seen in outlying areas. These huge deer are impressive creatures, about the size of horses, and the bulls grow spreading antlers each year. You may wonder where these picturesque animals came from, and if they’ve always been here. They now wander the areas of Bear Valley Springs, Stallion Springs, Golden Hills, and the mountains south of Highline Road in a r...
A Southern Pacific Railroad Fireman named James Rolls risked his life in an attempt to save a little child right in front of the Tehachapi Depot. It was April 1, 1952, and Fireman Rolls was onboard a freight train that had pulled off on the No. 1 siding track in Tehachapi to let a fast passenger train, the Santa Fe "Grand Canyon Limited" go by. As that eastbound passenger train bore down on Tehachapi, Santa Fe Engineer Sammy Uren was sickened when he saw a little blond-haired two-year-old girl s...
When my brother Lawrence and I were teenagers in the 1930s, we used to work for old Bill Browning catching jackrabbits outside Delano. He was an oldtimer, the first white baby born in Kern County and he once owned half of Delano. He was a bootlegger during Prohibition, and he was a great guy. He used to sell big jackrabbits to the greyhound dog tracks in LA for $1 apiece. When he had an order for 40 or 50 jackrabbits, then we would go set up nets out west of Delano in the alkali scrub, in the...
Now that summer is beginning to look towards the coming autumn, oak trees in the Tehachapi Mountains are starting to produce the crop that sustained life here for thousands of years: acorns. These distinctive, conical seeds are highly nutritious, containing significant amounts of carbohydrates, fats, protein and fiber, as well as minerals including potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and vitamin B-6. Animals of many kinds rely on the annual bounty of acorns to feed and nourish them, both now and...
"Anything north of the 210 freeway is Northern California." – Cal Fire Captain While in town to fight a massive wildfire in Blackburn Canyon, a Cal Fire crew went into a restaurant on Tehachapi Boulevard to eat and said to their server, Megan, that, "This is our first time here – we're from Southern California." When she replied that Tehachapi IS in Southern California, this was his response....
"I wasn't born in Tehachapi, but I chose to live here for years, and that counts for something." – Cactus Jack Cactus Jack was well-known for the beef jerky he used to sell at the corner of Highway 202 and Cummings Valley Road....
"Indian Summer weather in Tehachapi, with warm gentle days and cool nights, can be as sweet as the smile on a sleeping baby." – The Mountain Poet...
"Life is easy; it's music that's hard." – Dave Bouldin Dave Bouldin is retired from the fire service as a station chief but has long been a musician and band leader....
"Time, industry, hard work, patience and a large number of donkeys and mules will overcome all difficulties." – Padre Johann Jakob Baegert Father Baegert was a German Jesuit priest stationed in Baja California in the mid 1700s. Large numbers of mules were used to move the huge sections of pipe needed to build the Los Angeles Aqueduct beginning in 1904. The cement plant at Monolith (now called Lehigh Southwest) was built by the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power to supply cement for the a...
The annual Tehachapi Oldtimers Reunion was held on Aug. 1, and more than 425 people gathered in Philip Marx Central Park to visit with friends, acquaintances and in many cases, former neighbors who returned to their old hometown for this celebratory event. The Tehachapi Oldtimers Reunion is a special event that is a testament to Tehachapi's strong sense of community and respect for history and traditions. Most cities and towns don't have an annual celebration like this. They don't even try. The...
As the West in general, and California, of course, experience another devastating wildfire year in 2021, it reminds me of terrible fire that we had 10 years ago. One of the most destructive wildfires that ever swept through the Tehachapi Mountains struck in September of 2011, destroying 32 residences and 30 outbuildings, as well as 19 cars and trucks and 19 RVs as it burned its way through 14,585 acres. Started by a Sept. 4 plane crash that killed both occupants of a small Cessna, the blaze was...
