Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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Since the Tehachapi Mountains can get very cold in winter, and we usually have snow, you may wonder if any creatures in our area hibernate to avoid the coldest months. Let's look at how local animals cope with the cold. Black Bears are well-known for hibernating, at least in areas with severe winters, but the picture is more complicated in an area with mixed or open winters like Tehachapi. The term "open winter" refers to areas that get snow and cold, but may also have much warmer periods...
When most people think about Tehachapi and fruit trees, the first type that comes to mind are apple trees. This is appropriate, since fine quality apples have been grown in the Tehachapi Mountains since some of the first settlers planted apples here in the 1850s and 1860s, but honestly there are easier choices for home gardeners. Apples are vulnerable to an insect pest known as the coddling moth (the worm in the apple), and you usually have to do something to control them -- commercial...
If you want to learn more about the Native Americans of the Tehachapi Mountains, the first two things to do are this: visit the Tehachapi Museum, and also pick up a book called Handbook of the Kawaiisu. This unique book was a life accomplishment of a remarkable Nuwä elder named Harold Williams. Harold was a leading tribal member of the Nuwä, the Tehachapi Indian people, and he realized a longtime dream with the 2009 publication of Handbook of the Kawaiisu, a book he co-authored with a...
A friend of mine, Manney Cowan, grew up here and lived in Tehachapi, and people used to pay him to live-trap nuisance animals from their yards and relocate them to remote areas. He'd trap raccoons that were peeling up sod looking for worms and other invertebrates to eat, or catching the fish out of people's ponds, or skunks that were under structures, that kind of thing. One time he was catching skunks (there's seldom only one) that were living under a shed in Bear Valley Springs. I went with...
Sierra Nevada Natural History By Tracy I. Storer and Robert Usinger 1963 University of California Press ISBN # 0-520-01226-7 While not specifically about the Tehachapi Mountains, this field guide documents the plants, animals, physical features and much more of the adjacent Sierra Nevada Range, so much of it is applicable to our area. With some photos and line drawings and hundreds of brief descriptions, it is a very useful and well-written guide to the natural world. Desert Country By Bob...
If you drive east out of Tehachapi on Highway 58, then head north on Highway 14, the very first waystation or pit stop of any kind that you'll encounter will be one you won't forget: the Jawbone Canyon Store, a Kern County original for 60 years. This little desert oasis has offered a variety of supplies and a good sense of humor since the gas station first opened on July 28, 1963. For many years it was owned by Richard "Bonk" McKendry, a colorful character who was once married to the famed...
One of the ways that I know California has been locked in an ongoing drought is that fact that I often dream about a winter and spring that are green and lush and verdant. It can seem hard to imagine now, but there are years when the Tehachapi Mountains are home to lots of seasonal creeks that are flowing with water, beautiful water. . . . The year 2011 was one of those years, when the rains and snows kept coming, recharging reservoirs, springs and aquifers. It seems so long ago now, but I remem...
Venture into the higher elevations in the Tehachapi Mountains, about 5,000 feet and higher, and you will eventually encounter one of our most common conifers: the White Fir. These handsome trees have beautiful green foliage, a dense symmetrical appearance and a delicious, apple/citrusy aroma. They smell just like Christmas trees, because they are Christmas trees – the tree species that Santa most often leaves the gifts around are White Fir, Noble Fir, Douglas Fir and other members of the f...
"Cho'ikizh! Cho'ikizh!" The Nuwä Indian woman heard the familiar call as she sat under a hava kahni (shade house), a square, open-sided shelter made of willow poles and topped with a thatching of leafy willow branches. As she sat in the welcome shade on a warm summer morning, weaving a basket with her skillful fingers, the piya (mother) again heard the sound: "Cho'ikizh! Cho'ikizh!" (cho-EEK-izh). This was not a human calling out, it was a Western Scrub Jay, making one of the raucous calls for...
Virginia Gonzalez Sanchez was born at home on F Street in Tehachapi on June 23, 1931, the daughter of Lupe Cortez and Augustin Gonzalez, and was brought into the world by her grandmother, Benito's wife Cipriana Cortez. Virginia's family has deep roots in California, since her ancestors lived here before California was a state, or was even part of the U.S. -- they were originally Californios when the territory was still part of Mexico, prior to 1848. Her grandfather Benito Cortez came to the...
One of my favorite aspects of living in the Tehachapi Mountains is how vibrant and tangible the changing of the seasons can feel. The weather, the angle of sunlight, the temperatures, the plants and animals. . . they all shift and pulse seasonally. The longer you live here, the more expected and predictable these patterns are. Right now, we're in the golden days of autumn, and this is partly due to one of the most significant flowering events of the year in the Tehachapi Mountains: the annual...
Leatta "Tootie" Anderson was the definition of a local resident: not only was she raised in Tehachapi, her mother Ola Cuddeback Ford was born here in 1901, and Ola's mother, Francis Tungate Cuddeback, was born in Old Town in about 1873. Tootie's grandmother, Francis Tungate, was from an early ranching family and she married Jess Cuddeback, from another pioneer ranching family. At one time the Cuddebacks owned most of the land that now comprises Golden Hills. For 71 years Tootie was married to...
Kevin Cousineau didn't just participate in the early days of wind energy development in California, and Tehachapi in particular – he engineered it. With no degree in engineering, this highly intelligent and resourceful man nonetheless designed some of the vital electronic components inside wind turbines that enable them to be reliable, and in the process he helped make wind energy a viable industry. Kevin grew up in Kennewick, Washington, in the southeastern portion of the state near the border...
Dae Lantz Jr. and his wife Jean were married in Oklahoma in 1949. Dae's father, Dae Lantz Sr., was a rancher who owned property in Independence and in 1947 he had bought a ranch in Cameron Canyon, east of Tehachapi. Dae Sr. invited his son to come work as his ranch foreman in Cameron, so the newlyweds packed up and headed west to the Tehachapi Mountains. With them came a splendid registered collie that Jean had bought with her own money when she was 17. Named Lady Taffeta, the dog had cost $25,...
In any lake, reservoir or pond where water stands year-round in the Tehachapi Mountains, or this part of California in general, sooner or later there will appear a plant that is important to waterfowl and other aquatic species and was of great significance to Native people: the tule, also known as Hardstem Bulrush (Schoenoplectus acutus). Tules are a type of giant sedge that is found in marshlands all over the West. The long round stems are dark green and grow from three to ten feet tall, with...
With Homecoming this past week at Tehachapi High, it's a good time to remember lifelong Tehachapi resident Terry Edwards, who earned the title "Warrior of the Century" and the "Ultimate Warrior" after he achieved a milestone that will likely never be equaled by anyone else: he attended 413 Warrior football games in a row without missing a single one for more than 30 years, from 1980 until he passed away at the age of 80 in 2014. Terry's incredible streak of Warrior fandom began with a game...
One of the most familiar and charismatic residents of the Tehachapi Valley was a man named Ed Tompkins, whose name is still very much with us: Edward L. Tompkins Elementary School on Curry Street was named for him. After living a long and happy life, Ed died at the age of 92 on May 5, 2012 in his sleep in Anderson, California. Because few of the people whose children attend Tompkins Elementary know much about the school's remarkable namesake, allow me to tell you more about him. Ed was friendly...
Mary Gassaway was born in the tiny village of Elizabethtown, Illinois by the Ohio River on September 15, 1915 to Oscar and Mary Weaver. She had three siblings -- Sarah, Harold and Albert. Her father, Oscar, was a commercial fisherman and a Pentecostal preacher who caught catfish and bass with seine nets, and the family lived on a houseboat on the river. When Mary was about 12 years old, the family moved to Van Buren, Missouri, located by the Current River, and when he wasn't working, her father...
For most people, the initials "PJ" are an abbreviation for pajamas, but for those involved with natural resources in the West, PJ is shorthand for Pinyon Juniper Woodland, one of the most widespread plant communities across a swath of the American Southwest. Pinyon Juniper Woodland covers an estimated one quarter of all of New Mexico, and is also found in extensively in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and parts of California. In our area, Pinyon Juniper Woodland is found in much of Sand Canyon,...
I was born in Tehachapi on November 7, 1938 to Pedro and Hillaria Hernandez. I was one of nine children who lived to adulthood, two of my siblings died as children. My Dad had first come to Tehachapi in 1917 to work at the cement plant, then he went back to Mexico to bring his wife and baby son Armando back to live with him in the Monolith in the early 1920s. When I was about four years old, the family moved from the Monolith townsite into Tehachapi. Growing up in Tehachapi, I roamed the area...
One of the most common raptors in the Tehachapi Mountains is a small falcon that is only a slightly bigger than a cockatiel, but it has sharp talons like curved ice picks, a hooked bill and a fierce little dark-eyed stare: the American Kestrel. American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) are North America's smallest falcon, and also the most widespread one. These little raptors are primarily birds of open areas, and they can commonly be seen perching on power poles or the crossarms at the top of...
Beginning in 2010, a Tehachapi resident named Eugen "Gene" Kuntsman began a retirement job which consisted of living all summer at 10,000 feet in the High Sierra, cooking for the famed Rock Creek Pack Station. In 2014, he described the pack station life: "This legacy business keeps 80 to 110 horses and mules in service during the May through September pack season, with the help of about 25 employees. I regularly cook for a score of wranglers and guides as well as paying guests. Sometimes I...
A small group of interested locals hiked to a canyon on Bear Mountain recently to visit a rock art site whose location had been lost in the fog of time. Among the hikers was Fred Fickert, 75, who first discovered the artwork almost 60 years ago, when he was a 16-year-old on horseback gathering cattle on his family's ranch, which later became Bear Valley Springs. Back in 1966, all of Bear Valley and most of Bear Mountain were owned by the Fickert clan. The family first moved to Bear Valley in...
Ernest Twisselmann was a rancher and the author of A Flora of Kern County, the definitive book of the 1,875 various species and subspecies of plants that he found growing in sprawling Kern County. He began collecting plant specimens in the Temblor Range at the western border of the county in 1952, and finished fieldwork in 1966. His book was published in 1967, when the Fickert family still owned Bear Valley. He was an amazing and inspiring man. Here are some excerpts from his book, which stands...
High up in the White Mountains, about 200 miles northeast of Tehachapi, there is a place unlike any other in the world. It is the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, and some of the living trees there are more than 4,000 years old. This surreal place is part of the Inyo National Forest, and is home to the oldest living trees in the world, the Great Basin Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva). California is the most conifer-rich place on Earth, with 52 different species of cone-bearing trees,...
