Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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Our recent snow storm was unusual for several reasons: we seldom have a White Thanksgiving, so that in itself was remarkable, and three days of snow in a row is also a rare occurrence these days. But is it typical of Tehachapi winters? I'm glad you asked. . . Technically, December is more of an autumn month than a winter month, at least according to the calendar – winter doesn't officially start until December 21, meaning that December has 20 autumn days and only 11 winter days in it. In the T...
In 1892, Benjamin Harrison was president and John Wanamaker was Postmaster General. When Mr. Wanamaker had been in office 15 months, he invited several hundred Postmasters and Postmistresses from all sections of the country and representing all classes of Post Offices to come to Washington for three days to discuss how we can improve the postal system and service. The final night of the meeting, a banquet was held, and at the speaker's table were Mr. Wanamaker, President Harrison, Secretary of...
On Sunday, May 10, 1863, we got some breakfast at a house not far off in this miserable spot and then pushed on about 18 miles until we struck fine grass and good water and camped about noon. We crossed the ridge to Tehachapi (on your map Tah-ee-chay-pah) Pass. From the ridge we had a wide view out on the desert. The Tehachapi Valley is a pretty basin five or six miles long, entirely surrounded by high mountains and lies over four thousand feet above the sea. It is covered with good pasturage...
The young Nuwä woman trotted lightly along the slope, on a game trail that human steps had enlarged to a footpath. When she reached the top of the oak-dappled hill, she paused by an old leafy tree with weathered gray bark, its branches sturdy against the blue Tehachapi sky. As her experienced eyes took in the familiar landscape before her, she saw a large bird with outstretched wings circle towards her. Though the bird was a few hundred feet above the valley floor below, it was not far above...
About 15 years ago, commuters started noticing a black cow by herself in the big pasture east of town, between Highway 58 and Lehigh Cement plant at Monolith. The cow came to more people's attention when a reader wrote a letter that appeared in the Tehachapi News criticizing Kern County Animal Control officers for failing to respond to complaints about the cow's welfare. The letter writer felt that the cow should be provided with protection from the elements and took Animal Control to task for...
In 1975, the American Freedom Train came through Tehachapi Pass. It was pulled by a steam locomotive known as "Spirit of the West," Southern Pacific engine #4449. This engine went into service in May of 1940, and was the last GS-4 steam locomotive built – and the last one still surviving. It was put into service pulling the Coast Daylight trains, which were SP's prime passenger trains in California. Engine #4449 was one of the steam locomotives that were called "streamlined." There were about 5...
"1997 was a year when we had a lot more skunks than usual reported in Tehachapi – they were everywhere that year. We had them on Bamboo Court, Brentwood, Curry Street, around the high school, all over town. And even when people didn't report seeing them, they certainly smelled them. As the California Department of Fish and Game warden for the Tehachapi area said, "At the time, I had a lot of calls about skunks." People kept finding them in box traps that they had set for ground squirrels or c...
Despite the fact that we're now into November, the daytime temperatures are still warm enough that I'm still seeing lizards on a daily basis. These little reptiles are woven into the tapestry of life all throughout the Tehachapi Mountains, and there is at least one or more species found in practically every habitat type. California is home to about 70 different species or subspecies of lizard and about a dozen of these can be found within the Tehachapi Mountains. Some of these are familiar...
My parents used to own a store called Gil's Rock Shop on Tehachapi Boulevard (near the current location of Sheridan's Consignment). "The Rock Shop," as most locals called it, carried rocks and minerals, but also a variety of jewelry, fossils, lapidary tools and Indian artifacts. The store also had enormous vintage oil paintings of Western scenes hung high on the walls. The store was the dream of my Dad, Chet "Gil" Gilbertson, who was born in South Dakota and went to mining school in Minnesota...
My Dad died of tuberculosis in 1930 when I was only 12 years old. I had been living with him and his brother. I hadn't seen my Mom in years and after my Dad died, my Uncle Bob told me, "Take your clothes and choose yourself a blanket – you're on your own." I stayed with different Slav families in Tehachapi and worked to support myself. I musta been the smartest kid in town 'cause it only took me one year to get through school – I went in through one door and out through the other! As I got a lit...
I was born in Wayne County, Tennessee, one of Charles and Bertha Peacock's four children. In 1942, when I was 12 years old, our family moved to Delano in search of a better opportunity. My Dad, a career barber, opened Peacock Barber Shop in Delano. After graduating from Delano High, I went to Bakersfield College and in school I met a Tehachapi boy named Dick Johnson – we had a psychology class together. Well, we hit it off and got married in 1949. We moved to Tehachapi in 1950, much to my i...
Ever since I was a little kid, I've been interested in old objects and artifacts from earlier eras, especially if they were used in the Tehachapi Mountains. These are tangible remnants of our history, and though the people who once used them are gone and the places have changed, these humble items have traveled through time and are physical reminders of the past. I joined the Tehachapi Heritage League when I was 11 years old, when the museum was housed in the little old Chamber of Commerce...
"Admiration: our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves." – Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Bierce was an American journalist and humorist who was a contemporary of Mark Twain. Both brilliant and cynical, he wrote a newspaper column for years in which he offered his own definitions to familiar words....
A young lady who sat by President Calvin Coolidge at a dinner tried all evening to get him into a conversation and all she could get was yes, no or a grunt. She finally told him that she had made a bet with her friends that she could get him to say more than three words during the dinner. He merely turned to her and said, "You lose." – President Calvin Coolidge...
"If you're wanting to see trains in Tehachapi or watch a train go around the Loop, don't try it on a Monday, or at least if you do wait until late in the afternoon – Monday is UP's designated minor maintenance day, and the tracks are often closed to rail traffic until the end of the workday." – Ed Gordon Ed is an extremely knowledgeable rail enthusiast and was for many years the helpful and informative owner of Trains Etc. on Tehachapi Boulevard....
"There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir, We must rise and follow her; When from every hill of flame, She calls and calls each vagabond by name." – William Bliss Carman...
"The Kawaiisu set up temporary camps for gathering acorns and pinyons, and these were surrounded by circular brush structures approximately thirty feet in diameter. These bulwarks were very simply constructed of white fir tree branches – puu-gu-SIV-ah – reinforced with heaps of sagebrush about four feet high. They served as windbreaks." – Dr. Stephen Cappanari, 1947 White Fir is one of the main conifer species found in the Tehachapi Mountains. A bed of White-Fir boughs was John Muir's favor...
"In 1978, we had a 100-year flood in Sand Canyon. Then in 1983, we had another 100-year flood. I thought, 'Boy, time really flies. It hardly seemed like a hundred years had passed!" – Liz Kachmar Liz has probably lived in Sand Canyon longer than anyone else – she and her late husband first moved there in 1974....
"I knocked out the last 9 miles of the trail to get to Tehachapi-Willow Springs Rd. at Mile 558 on the Pacific Crest Trail. A mile or two before I got there, while hiking steadily down through the world's largest wind farm, I spied a white truck at a road. My heartbeat accelerated - could it be Coppertone? This roaming trail angel in an RV gives out root beer floats, and is generally amazing. I forced myself to not sprint the last part of the trail, in case it wasn't him. It was him. I inhaled...
"Tehachapi! is not a sneeze, but the name of a mob of mountain peaks and crags that disputed the right of way with the Southern Pacific Railroad. The heights were impractical, the rocks were immovable, and so the train climbed as high as it could, and crept into a burrow like a fox." – Benjamin F. Taylor, 1878...
Hundreds of Turkey Vultures suddenly appear: What in the world is going on? You're driving in Tehachapi on a late afternoon in September or October, and you suddenly notice a few very large dark birds coasting through the sky, gliding down toward the treetops. As you look at them, you're aware of dozens more. "What the. . .?" you think to yourself as you watch these kite-like apparitions cluster around and then land in the tallest trees. You're not alone. Countless people have had the same...
One day in 1994, I got a call from Marty Smith, who was the California Department of Fish and Game Warden in Tehachapi at the time. He had received a call from the landlord of an apartment in Golden Hills. A tenant had moved out and left a couple of animals behind. I arrived at the apartment with Marty and found an odd pair: a guinea hen and a snapping turtle. Finding a home for the guinea hen was no problem, but the turtle was another matter. "I guess it's the end of the line for this big...
There was an old guy called Swede who used to show up every fall in Arvin, ragged and dirty. My aunt had a little three-room boarding house in Arvin. She was glad to rent him a room because he'd pay for four months in advance. The first thing he'd do is go buy a new pair of bib overalls and a new shirt, shoes and underwear and go take a bath. I had a service station in Arvin and he wandered in one day. He was getting old and I mentioned that I had to go to Tehachapi and he asked if he could bum...
I was born in Croatia in the first months of World War II and I can remember being a little boy later in the war and watching war planes flying overhead to bomb a nearby village. I lived with my parents and three brothers on a farm in the Croatian mountains. It was not an easy life under Communist rule. We worked hard and there was still no money. If we wanted to have a pig, we had to have three – one for us and two for the Communists. One cold November day when I was 13 years old, I was in a ba...
Autumn has officially started and will now be redecorating the Tehachapi Mountains, changing the broadleaf trees and shrubs from assorted shades of green to a variety of yellows, browns, golds and reds. The longer, colder fall nights bring out the color in both our native and introduced trees. Virginia Creeper, a popular ornamental vine, will soon be a riot of color in Tehachapi, with the more exposed leaves having turned a deep old barn red while the more protected leaves are a dozen different...
