Descriptions of Mills often went like this: “He just stumps around from one saloon to another, and at the end of the month he draws his $76.” [$2100 today] . Mills carried a badge and a large pistol and also packed a large ego.

In the 1980s Tonight Show host Johnny Carson dropped B-bombs on Bakersfield,
but by that time newspapers had long bruised the town’s image. The scolding about summer heat, tar-and-feathering, vigilante hangings, rigged town elections, and an expanding red-light district. A local newspaper wrote, in 1882, “This town, or its name rather, has bec…[Read more]

Visitors once crowded the park, treasured it, and supported it. Some say a rowdy element took over the park in the late 1950s, but others say the park’s demise was caused by bigger paychecks, the advent of television, Disneyland, and Magic Mountain. Connie Basbis Pappas answered best when she said, “It was a peaceful place, the train was slow, a…[Read more]

For sixty years segregation of Chinese in Bakersfield had been nearly complete, and it continued even into death.
Some local historians wrote that in the 1870s a Chinese cemetery was near today’s Terrace Way, but that burying place was not originally Chinese.

In the summer of 1901 Mrs. George Hinkle entered a Bakersfield saloon to beg her husband to come home, and the next day when her neighbors found out he had beat her, Hinkle came close to being tar-and-feathered. It probably reminded Bakersfield of a similar incident that happened in May of 1890 when a lawyer was actually tarred and feathered.

Henry Alexander Jastro directed the course of Kern County politics for twenty-five years. Nothing moved without his blessing,

History of brewing and beer sales in Bakersfield, California 1866-1920

About Bakersfield, California Chinese-American businessman Earl Wong and his nightclub as told from the perspective of musician Carlyle Nelson who played there, wrote about it in his autobiography, and described it in conversations with Gilbert Gia.

This account follows the public and private life of Marie Brignaudy in the male-dominated world of Bakersfield vice, 1905-1933. Included are descriptions of her hotel, saloon, and cribs and examples of the cooperative and adversarial relationships she had with the Kern County Board of Supervisors, the Bakersfield City Council, and Bakersfield’s v…[Read more]

The letters of Isabella Ann Smith Suverkrop (1819-1903) and Edward Albert Suverkrop (1814-1895) provide an intimate glimpse into family life and society in America and Scotland of more than 150 years ago. Gold Rush California and Civil War Washington, DC, are included.

A history of Kern County jails from the county’s creation in 1866 until the removal of the county’s main jail that had been compromised in the earthquake of 1952.

A history of publicly-financed dormitories for high-school-age boys and girls and the school’s care of them at Bakersfield in Kern County Californian.