Bakersfield is the county seat of Kern County, California, in the United States. As of the 2000 censusGR2, the city population was 247,057. The city's economy thrives on agriculture, petroleum extraction, and refining. It is one of the fastest growing of the larger cities of the United States. As of 2006 the population is estimated to be around 312,000 within the city limits making it the 11th largest municipality in California and 59th largest city in the nation (as of latest US Census estimates). The greater Bakersfield area numbers around 451,800 including unincorporated areas, according to local municipal sources. It is California's third largest inland city after Fresno and Sacramento.
Top producing area crops include cotton, carrots, table grapes, almonds, pistachios, citrus, wheat, garlic, and potatoes. Local oil fields include the prolific 100-year old Kern River field, the Midway-Sunset field, the former Naval Petroleum Reserve at Elk Hills, the Kern Front field, and the Belridge field.
[edit] History
The Yokuts Indians were the first people to settle in the San Joaquin Valley, some 8000 years ago. One source cites the English transliteration of the Yokuts place name for the Bakersfield area as Woy Loo. In 1776, the Spanish missionary Father Francisco Garcés was the first European to reach the area. In 1851, gold was discovered in the Kern River in the southern Sierra mountains, and, in 1865, the first discovery of oil was made in the valley. The Bakersfield area, a tule reed infested malarial swamp, 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 delta, which occupied what is now the downtown area.
[edit] Founding
In 1863, Colonel Thomas Baker, formerly of the Iowa militia, moved into the Kern Island area to champion the cause of reclamation, settling in a log cabin near what is now Truxtun Avenue and R Street. A former California State Senator who had experience as a surveyor, he had been recommended to survey and lay out the town of Visalia (in Tulare County) in the late 1850's. His reputation as one of the few government officials who was not corrupted by big business preceded him and served him well in the Kern Island area, where he soon also developed a reputation for hospitality. He had grown a field of alfalfa near the present day Amtrak Station for travelers to feed their horses. It was well known throughout California and even advertised in San Francisco newspapers that travelers should be sure to visit Colonel Baker and use his field of alfalfa to feed their stock. Anyone who came to "Baker's field" was sure to be treated as a long lost friend. As more families moved to the area, Baker subsidized development out of his own pocket by constructing public sawmills free of charge, helping other pioneers drain their land, and surveying. Following a flood on the Kern River which caused the re-routing of the river channel to the north, Baker was asked to plot out a new town. After this was done, at a founding ceremony in 1869, the residents surprised Baker by naming the town Bakersfield in his honor. Baker died of Typhoid Fever in 1872 and is buried at Union Cemetery.
[edit] Government
The Kern County seat, established in 1866 in the mountain town of Havilah, was moved to Bakersfield in 1874, where it has stayed. Bakersfield has been incorporated twice in its history, first in 1874, disbanding in 1876 in order to fire an unruly City Marshall. The city was incorporated again in 1898. Currently Bakersfield is governed by a City Council and Manager system with a mayor acting as the presiding officer.
[edit] Growth
In 1899, the Kern River Oilfield was discovered at the Discovery Well by two brothers digging with shovels in a pit along the Kern River about one-mile east of Gordon's Ferry, a ferry that took Overland Stages across the Kern River. The oilfield is still active today and is one of the nation's highest yielding fields of all time. The town continued to grow, reaching a population of about 300 by 1869, and 800 by 1871. Major floods in 1867 and 1893, and the fires of 1889 and 1919 did not reverse this trend. In 1874, the Southern Pacific Railroad came into the area but was not well-received because of high rates. On May 27, 1898, the San Joaquin Valley Railroad (popularly known as "The People's Railroad"), now the Santa Fe Railroad, arrived in Bakersfield, giving a great boost to the population. In the 1930s, the Great Plains drought and dust storms (commonly called the Dust Bowl) brought a large influx of refugees from Arkansas and Oklahoma, who went to work mostly in agriculture and the oil industries. The overwhelming numbers of Dust Bowl refugees was a source of considerable social strife. In later years, agricultural work in the area has mostly been conducted by Mexican migrant workers. The city's population grew slowly but steadily after World War II. Advances in steam-injection of oil wells rejuvenated the Kern County oilfields, many of which had been producing oil well before World War I. Migration from Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Southern California brought new residents, this time filling job openings in the oil industry. By 1980, Bakersfield's population was about 105,000. Within the next 20 years, Bakersfield's population exploded, topping 250,000 by 2000. Bakersfield's reputation as a "cow town" had seemed to protect it from people wanting to live here, even though the city has never had a cattle industry. Moreover, what kept people away was the extreme heat in the summer, dense Tule fog in the winter, and a reputation for racism. Throughout it all, Bakersfield was and is considered the West's capital of country music - Nashville West. Once the price of homes and the violence and gangs increased in larger cities nearby, that notion seemed to vanish overnight as hundreds of families chose the area for its affordability, strong family oriented community, and its relative proximity to Southern California. Oil is still important to the local economy, but even as the area's oil boom begins to dwindle, Bakersfield continues to grow, known for its friendliness toward economic expansion, with a highly diversified business community.
[edit] Education
Two of the earliest schools founded in Kern County were Mrs. Thomas Baker's school, opened in 1863 at the Baker home near present day 19th and N Streets, and a Catholic parochial school opened by Reverend Father Daniel Dade in 1865 in Havilah (then county seat). In 1880, Norris School was established. The land was donated by William Norris, a local farmer. Thirteen to twenty students were taught in one classroom during the 1880s. In 1915, the Norris School was rebuilt to accommodate a growing number of students. The school was torn down and reconstructed in 1950, and once again in 1980. Today the Norris School District is growing very steadily thanks to extremely fast growing home developments in northwest Bakersfield, and is recognized for its quality students and education. However, it is still smaller than the massive Bakersfield City School District (BCSD), the state's largest elementary school district. The BCSD serves most of the schools on the east side of town. Other Bakersfield area elementary school districts include Panama-Buena Vista, Rosedale, and Fruitvale. The first high school in Bakersfield, Kern County Union High School, opened in 1893. It was renamed Bakersfield High School after World War II. The site at California Avenue and F Street is also the first campus of Bakersfield College, which was established in 1913 and relocated in 1956 to its current location overlooking the Panorama Bluffs in northeast Bakersfield. Bakersfield College has a yearly enrollment of between 12,000 and 14,000 students. Since World War II, in order to serve a growing baby-boomer population, the Kern High School District has steadily expanded to its current eighteen campuses today with more than 35,000 students, making it the largest high school district in the state. In 1965, a university in the California State University system was founded in Bakersfield. California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) today has some 7,700 students, with a special focus on business and administration. It is an NCAA Division II sports powerhouse in the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) with some sports, including wrestling (PAC-10), competing in Division I. CSUB is currently attempting to join the Big West Conference and become a Division I athletic school. Despite the efforts to improve college-going rates in the community, Bakersfield still lags in that area. According to a March 2006 study by the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, the Bakersfield metropolitan area is one of the lowest college-educated communities in the nation. Calculated from 2000 US Census figures, the study shows that only 13.5 percent of adults in the Bakersfield MSA have a bachelor's degree or higher. This contrasts sharply with California and U.S. figures at 28 percent and 24 percent respectively.
[edit] Historic buildings
The great earthquake of July 21, 1952 changed the appearance of Bakersfield, promoting the flat, sprawling style of building that dominates the city today. The quake, centered near Bear Mountain, was the second largest quake in California history. It leveled most of downtown Bakersfield's historic Victorian brick businesses and hotels (including the once famous Southern Hotel), historic Chinatown area on the eastern side of downtown, and turn of the century buildings, including the once ornate County Court Building. Very few historic buildings exist today as a result.
[edit] Famous residents
Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren was raised in Bakersfield, and would later go on to decide such cases as Brown v. Board of Education and the Miranda decision. Before being appointed Chief Justice he was California Attorney General and then California Governor. Earl Warren Junior High School, and Warren Hall (on the campus of his alma mater, Bakersfield High School) are named in his honor.
President George W. Bush and President George H.W. Bush lived in Bakersfield for a year while George H.W. Bush was selling oil field equipment in 1947 immediately following World War II.
Rock band Korn is from Bakersfield, as is country star Rick Reno Stevens. Country legends Merle Haggard, a Bakersfield native, and Buck Owens, who settled there in 1950, are both associated with the city.
Geography
Bakersfield is located at 35°21′26″N, 119°1′54″W (35.357276, -119.031661)GR1, at 120 m (400 ft) in elevation. It lies near the southern "horseshoe" end of the San Joaquin Valley, with the southern tip of the Sierra Nevada's just to the east. The city limits extends to the Sequoia National Forest at the foot of the Greenhorn Mountain Range at the entrance to the Kern Canyon. The Tehachapi Mountains which are to the south feature the historic Tejon Ranch. To the west, the Temblor Range, which features the Carizzo Plain National Monument and the San Andreas Fault, is approximately 35 miles across the valley floor..
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 296.3 km² (114.4 mi²). Of this, 292.9 km² (113.1 mi²) is land and 3.4 km² (1.3 mi²) of it is water (1.14%).
Bakersfield lies approximately 160 km (100 mi) north of Los Angeles (about a 1.5-hour drive on I-5 and State Route 99) and about 500 km (300 mi) southeast of the state capital, Sacramento (about a 4.5-hour drive on State Route 99).
Demographics
As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 247,057 people, 83,441 households, and 60,995 families residing in the city. The population density was 843.4/km² (2,184.4/mi²). There were 88,262 housing units at an average density of 301.3/km² (780.4/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 61.87% White, 9.16% Black or African American, 1.40% Native American, 4.33% Asian, 0.12% Pacific Islander, 18.68% from other races, and 4.43% from two or more races. 32.45% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 83,441 households out of which 42.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.1% were married couples living together, 15.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.9% were non-families. 21.5% of all households were made up of individuals and 7.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.92 and the average family size was 3.41.
In the city the population was spread out with 32.7% under the age of 18, 10.1% from 18 to 24, 29.9% from 25 to 44, 18.6% from 45 to 64, and 8.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 30 years. For every 100 females there were 94.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.8 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $39,982, and the median income for a family was $45,556. Males had a median income of $38,834 versus $27,148 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,678. About 14.6% of families and 18.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 24.4% of those under age 18 and 8.4% of those age 65 or over.
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