BGuthrie Photos: CA -- Bakersfield

CA -- Bakersfield:

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Description of Pictures: Oil platforms near the city.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Wikipedia Description: Bakersfield, California
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bakersfield is a city near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County, California. It is roughly equidistant between Fresno and Los Angeles, which are 110 miles (180 km) to the north and south respectively. In the 2010 census, the city’s population was 347,483, making it the 9th largest city in California and the 52nd largest city in the United States. The city is also the county seat for Kern County, which encompasses the entire MSA and is the third largest county in California by area.

Bakersfield is the focal point of the larger Bakersfield-Delano Metropolitan Statistic Area (MSA). In 2010, it had a population of 839,631, making it the 62nd largest metropolitan area in United States.

Bakersfield has a very diverse economy. Kern County is the most productive oil producing county, and the fourth most productive agricultural county (by value) in the United States. Other industries include natural gas and other energy extraction, aerospace, mining, petroleum refining, manufacturing, distribution, food processing, and corporate/regional headquarters.

History

Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of Native American settlements dating back thousands of years. The Yokuts lived in lodges along the branches of the Kern River Delta and hunted antelope, tule elk, deer, bear, fish, and game birds. In 1776, the Spanish missionary Father Francisco Garcés became the first European to explore the area. Owing to the remoteness and inaccessibility of the region, however, the Yokuts were spared intensive contact until after the Mexican War of Independence, when Mexican settlers began to migrate to the area. Following the discovery of gold in California in 1848, settlers flooded into the San Joaquin Valley. In 1851, gold was discovered along the Kern River in the southern Sierra Nevada, and in 1865, oil was discovered in the valley. The Bakersfield area, once a tule-reed-covered marshland, was first known as Kern Island to the handful of pioneers who built log cabins there in 1860. The area was subject to flooding from the Kern River, which occupied what is now the downtown area, and experienced outbreaks of malaria.
Founding

In 1862 disastrous floods swept away the settlement founded there in 1860 by the German-born Christian Bohna, Among those attracted to the area by the California Gold Rush was Thomas Baker, a lawyer and former Colonel in the militia of Ohio, his home state. Baker moved to the banks of the Kern River in 1863, at what become known as Baker’s Field, which became a stopover for travelers. By 1870, with a population of 600, what was now known as Bakersfield was becoming the principal town in Kern County.

In 1873 it was officially incorporated as a city, by 1874 it officially replaced the dying town of Havilah as the county seat. Alexander Mills was hired as the city marshall, a man one historian would describe as "...an old man by the time he became Marshal of Bakersfield, and he walked with a cane. But he was a Kentuckian, a handy man with a gun, and not lacking in initiative and resource when the mood moved him." Business men and others began to resent Mills, who was cantankerous and high-handed in his treatment of them. Wanting to fire him but fearing reprisals, they came up with a scheme to disincorporate, effectively leaving him without an employer. According to local historian Gilbert Gia, the city was also failing to collect the taxes it needed for services. In 1876, the city voted to disincorporate.[why?] For the next 22 years, a citizen's council managed the community.

By 1880, the town had a population of 801, and by 1890, it had a population of 2,626. Migration from Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Southern California brought new residents, who were mostly employed by the oil industry.

The city reincorporated on January 11, 1898.

1952 earthquake

The First Baptist Church building, which survived the 1952 earthquake and is now a commercial use structure, is one of several buildings in Bakersfield listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).

On July 21, 1952, an earthquake struck at 4:52 am Pacific Standard Time. The earthquake, which measured 7.3 on the Richter scale and was felt from San Francisco to the Mexican border, destroyed the nearby communities of Tehachapi and Arvin. The earthquake's destructive force also bent cotton fields into U shapes, slid a shoulder of the Tehachapi Mountains across all four lanes of the Ridge Route, collapsed a water tower creating a flash flood, and destroyed the railroad tunnels in the mountain chain. Bakersfield was spared, experiencing minor architectural damage without loss of life.

A large aftershock occurred on July 29, and did minor architectural damage, but raised fears that the flow of the Friant-Kern Canal could be dangerously altered, potentially flooding the city and surrounding areas.

Aftershocks, for the next month, had become normal to Bakersfield residents, until August 22 at 3:42 pm a 5.8 earthquake struck directly under the town's center in the most densely populated area of the Southern San Joaquin Valley. Four people died in the aftershock, and many of the town's historic structures were permanently lost.

20th and 21st centuries

Over the 40-year period between 1970 and 2010, Bakersfield has grown 400% (from 70,000 to 347,000), making it one of the fastest growing cities in California.

Bakersfield's close proximity to mountain passes has made the city a transportation hub.

In 1990, Bakersfield was one of ten U.S. communities to receive the All-America City Award from the National Civic League.

In 2010, the Bakersfield MSA had a GMP (Gross Metropolitan Product) of $29.466 billion, making it the 73rd largest metropolitan economy in the United States.
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