California City

As usual I was digging through my mother Marion Deaver’s files and found some notes about the early days of California City, CA. It was not enough for an entire column, so I went to the East Kern Historical Society for some more information.

I think I have mentioned this before here, but my Mother was the first person to find proof of the community of California City actually coming into existence. Everyone denied that Nat Mendelsohn and his group were buying up land from the Mendeburu Ranch in the late ‘50s to create a planned community.

I rode out there with my mom in the summer on a cloudy day in the ‘50s. I was a little girl and not too excited about the whole thing. My mom found survey stakes marking out the boundaries of the community and took a photo, it made the wire service (before Internet) and the story broke all over the state.

When we got ready to come back to Mojave, along the dirt road which is now Neuralia Road, the skies opened up and a really gully buster came down. It scared my mom, thinking about flash floods and after that she never went out on wild excursions without my dad (Paul) with her to drive.

Mendelsohn thought that Los Angeles growth would spill northward to the East Kern desert and bought the land there for the city. He learned that water wells in the area, at that time, never dropped when they were pumped for agriculture in the area, and he knew he had found the place for his “futuristic” planned community. The city included 80,000 acres, was named California City and a development company was formed.

The community was formed in 1958, when the first parcels of land were marketed.

A DC-3 plane would fly in and unload perspective buyers to look over the land in California City. The landing strip was dirt at the corner of what is now Neuralia Road and California City Blvd.

A community services district was formed and later the development company donated ten acres to the Mojave Unified School District, where Robert P. Ulrich Elementary School was built in 1966.

A recreation center was opened at the end of 1958, “complete with a pool, motel, restaurant, and test gardens to see what would grow in the area.”

By 1959 there were 36 families living in the area. In 1959 a community club was organized; along with a volunteer fire department that was backed up by the Kern County Fire Department.

Later that year plans for a central park were outlined.

The centerpiece of the park included a 20-acre lake, 40-foot water fall, tennis courts, lots of grassy areas and a motel.

The city was formed in 1965 and Jim Riley was its first elected mayor. Borg’s Market opened; Marion Lee opened the first barber shop, and had the proud title of his being the first family to live in the city.

A doctor arrived, phone service came, and the city’s first nursery was built.

When the city was formed the development company which later became Great Western donated everything in the area to the city, some sold to the city for $1.

The city was and is located “as the crow flies” behind what is now the Mojave Spaceport, and was then what was left of the Mojave Marine Base.

All of the area was once a bombing range for the Marines. East Kern residents still go out in the desert and dig up old exploded ordnances left from those days, when the Marines were active in the ‘30s and ‘40s.

The best story concerning those old ordnances happened one sunny day in the city when a city crew was outside the city digging to repair a water line, as the story goes.

They (who will remain nameless) dug up a big bomb that they thought was harmless, tied it to the back of their city truck and dragged it down California City Blvd. to the old police station, located in the middle of town.

When the policemen saw it they all dove for cover and called the Bomb Squad from Edwards AFB. The Edwards crew gingerly loaded it back up and drove it back to the desert where they detonated what turned out to be a 500 lb. “Big Bertha” bomb.

Who knew?