Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Sorted by date Results 301 - 325 of 373
Newer Tehachapi residents who have wondered what it was like back in the old days, when there used to be more snow, don't have to wonder any more: our snowstorm on December 26 was like the winter storms that used to be a yearly occurrence. In fact, the speed of this snowfall would be exceptional during any year, past or present – we went from having no snow at all to having a foot and a half in less than 24 hours. Even in previous decades when we routinely got more snow, it would typically t...
I was involved in the early days of the California Condor Recovery program, prior to the capture of all the remaining birds in 1987 in a last-ditch (and ultimately very successful) effort to prevent their extinction. We suspected that lead poisoning was one of the leading causes of condor mortality, caused by ingesting bullet fragments from carcasses and hunter's gut piles. We wanted to take blood samples and check their lead levels, but there were only 22 birds in existence and the U.S. Fish...
My Dad was in the British Army during World War I. When he was only 19, he got captured by the Germans and taken to a military prison camp in Germany. It was newly built and had wooden barracks surrounded by barbed wire – like the camp in the old Hogan's Heroes television show, though that took place in World War II. My Dad hated being a prisoner and was constantly trying to figure out how to escape. One night when it was misty and kind of foggy he got his chance. He managed to wriggle his w...
While Tehachapi is rightfully known as the Land of Four Seasons, it could also be known as the Land of Lenticulars, since the formation of these distinctive, sometimes amazing looking clouds is a common occurrence in the Tehachapi Mountains. While headed out to Cummings Valley with friends late on Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 17, in the fading light we saw a huge lenticular cloud with a large completely circular hole in the middle of it. It looked like a giant round spacecraft had either gone up...
Actually, a first remembered Christmas for me, a member of the Davis Family, was in the desert town of Mojave with the famous strong winds hitting the house. That one action of the harsh, howling wind always made me, as a small child, feel quite secure in my warm bed with my parents nearby. There was a problem though because we had no fireplace for the jolly old elf, Santa, to make an entrance into our living room. The brick chimney atop our house connected to a wood stove, and that worried me....
I was up on a hilltop overlooking Hart Flat, cleaning up some branches and deadwood for firewood. It got dark and I could hear some coyotes calling, so I turned my headlights out and started making predator calls, making kind of a squeaking, whistling sound with my lips to see if I could call in any coyotes to investigate the sound. I had my flashlight out, and I held it close to my chest. I saw a barn owl take off and head towards a bald mountain ridge. I stood there and kept making that sound...
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...
