Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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What kind of weather can you expect in Tehachapi during each month? Here's a first look In the last issue of The Loop, I mentioned that I would give a little month-by-month look at weather in the Tehachapi Mountains. So this is the first installment of that monthly summary. Our weather is varied and over the years has often defied accurate prediction, but here's what you can reasonably expect from the first four months of the year. Bear in mind that Tehachapi weather is not always reasonable....
The following is Frank Nejedly's marvelous account of what may have been the greatest single assembly of steam locomotives in railroading history, and it occurred quite unintentionally in Tehachapi in November of 1942. Nejedly was a Southern Pacific telegrapher and amateur photographer who explored throughout this area – his 1911 Studebaker was one of the earliest cars in the Tehachapi Mountains. He was a handsome, robust man of keen intellect and memory, with an encyclopedic knowledge of trains...
Wind is a fact of life when you live in the Tehachapi Mountains – there's a good reason there are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of wind turbines on local hillsides. Mountain passes tend to channel winds, and three mountain passes – Altamont Pass, Tehachapi Pass and San Gorgonio Pass – were the areas where the wind energy industry was born in California in the 1980s. While our winds are variable, there are some basic patterns that tend to hold true. Our prevailing wind is from the west/...
When I was growing up, I lived on a ranch between Onyx and Weldon, in the Kern River Valley. There were no high schools in Tehachapi or Kern Valley, so the kids who lived there had to go down to Bakersfield and attend Bakersfield Union High School, now just known as BHS. There were dormitories on the school grounds and the kids would come down on Monday morning, and then stay in the dorms all week and go home on Friday after school. That was quite a transition, for little 12 and 13-year-olds to...
During World War II, the Marine Corps put an anti-aircraft gun in a field right by where the Tehachapi News office is today, near the corner of North Mill Street and Highway 58, though neither of those roads were there at that time. They figured that if the Japanese were going to attack the Marine Corps Base that was in Mojave then, they'd have to come through Tehachapi Pass. There was a crew stationed there with that gun all the time – they called it an "ack-ack gun" [for the phonetic a...
When my wife Lucille and I lived down in El Centro, her mother, Gladys Girado, lived with us. She was a wonderful Nuwä (Kawaiisu) Indian lady who had been raised around Twin Oaks and Lorraine Canyon. She spoke fluent Nuwä and only broken English – a lot of times she'd forget that I didn't speak the language and she'd say something to me in Nuwä, but usually I could figure out what she was saying. She was a shy person and very humble. We had a swimming pool, but Gladys had never learned to swim...
Of the four seasons in the Tehachapi Mountains, spring is the one with the greatest diversity of weather, temperatures, natural changes and other conditions. Officially beginning about March 20 and lasting until June 21, spring in Tehachapi can bring snow, wind and freezing cold, but it can also be a time of gentle rain, cool breezes and mild temperatures. And spring can also bring hot weather, dry winds and decidedly summer-like conditions. The three months of spring offer the biggest range of...
Mountain Tales are accounts and recollections of life in the Tehachapi Mountains, collected over decades by Jon Hammond. "My parents, Evard and Hazel Dickerson began farming and dairying in Tehachapi in 1911. Their dairy was located below the Tehachapi Pioneer Cemetery in what is now Golden Hills. The place was called Meadow Brook Dairy, and it was right where Meadowbrook Park is today – our dairy was the source of that name. My dad, "Dick" Dickerson, raised registered Milking Shorthorn c...
Mountain Tales are accounts and recollections of life in the Tehachapi Mountains, collected over decades by Jon Hammond. "Harry Beauford Jr. was a film projectionist and he had two projectors and one amplifier. We'd load them up into Harry's old Model A Ford, which had an enclosed delivery truck bed on it, and then we'd haul 'em up to Kernville so he could show movies there once a week. After the show we'd load them up again and bring them back. Once we tipped over near Walker Pass, but people...
Mountain Tales are accounts and recollections of life in the Tehachapi Mountains, collected over decades by Jon Hammond. "I (Jim) started school in Tehachapi in 1932 when I was 7 years old. For awhile we lived up in Antelope Canyon at the old lime kiln camp, staying in the main cook shack. I joined the Navy when I was 17, and when I got out, I went to work for my friend Bud Lutge, who owned the Newhall Dairy. In 1953, Bud bought the Antelope Valley Dairy and my wife Teri and I moved to...
Spring can be an amazingly beautiful time in the Tehachapi Mountains, especially after wet winters like we've had this year, when frequent storms are followed by a rainbow of colored wildflowers. It has been said that "The Earth laughs in flowers" and our mountains this year have been giving us wild blossoms in laughing abundance. I've compiled a list of some favorite wildflowers that thrive in our area. Most of these ephemeral beauties are blooming right now. All of our native plants face this...
My favorite Tehachapi area back roads for you to explore I often get asked to recommend pleasant drives for people who are newer to the area and I'm happy to do so, since the Tehachapi Mountains have an assortment of picturesque country roads that wind their way through the foothills, valleys, canyons and mountains of this California range. These two-lane back roads are relics from an earlier time – some were even dirt roads for horses and wagons before the arrival of autos and asphalt. S...
The Tehachapi area is defined and delineated by its mountains. Valleys in the Tehachapi Mountains tend to be bowl valleys, ringed by mountain ridges on all sides, rather than open ended V-shaped notch valleys. Our mountains surround us, they help determine our weather and they are a perpetual and comforting backdrop to our lives. It can be confusing to visitors or newer arrivals to know the names of the larger, more distinctive peaks in our area, so here is a profile of some of the more notable...
Prior to the arrival of Europeans to North America around the year 1500, California was home to an estimated 300,000 Native people who spoke 300 dialects of about 100 distinct languages. It was one of the most culturally diverse places the world has ever known. Native Californians survived and thrived while adapting to the state's wildly different landscapes. From fog shrouded coasts to dry inland valleys, from vast deserts to towering mountains, the various grasslands, savannahs, chaparral, woo...
Editors note: Jon Hammond has been a friend of The Loop's for a long time and we are excited to be the home of his column, Land of Four Seasons. His knowledge of Tehachapi's history, and the flora and fauna that call it home, are bound to make some beautiful stories for our readers. Anyone who has lived here has found themselves in the position of having to answer the question "Where is Tehachapi?" Like most questions, it's easier to ask than to answer. When people would ask my friend and...
