Kern County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield.
Bakersfield is a city in and the county seat of Kern County, California, United States. The city covers about 151 sq mi (390 km2) near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, which is located in the Central Valley region.
Tehachapi is a city in Kern County, California, United States, in the Tehachapi Mountains, at an elevation of 3,970 feet (1,210 m), between the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. Tehachapi is 35 miles (56 km) east-southeast of Bakersfield, and 20 miles (32 km) west of Mojave. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 10 square miles (26 km2) and a population of 14,414. The Tehachapi area is known for the nearby Tehachapi Loop, the Pacific Crest Trail and for the excellent conditions for the aerial sport of gliding.
State Route 58 is a major east-west state highway in the U.S. state of California that runs across the Coast Ranges, the southern San Joaquin Valley, the Tehachapi Mountains, which border the southern Sierra Nevada, and the Mojave Desert. It runs between U.S. Route 101 near Santa Margarita and Interstate 15 in Barstow. It has junctions with Interstate 5 near Buttonwillow, State Route 99 in Bakersfield, State Route 202 in Tehachapi, State Route 14 near Mojave, and U.S. Route 395 at Kramer Junction. SR 58 also provides access to Edwards Air Force Base. At various points it is known as the Calf Canyon Highway, Carrisa Highway, Bakersfield-McKittrick Highway, Rosa Parks Highway, Westside Parkway, Barstow-Bakersfield Highway, Bakersfield Tehachapi Highway, Kern County Korean War Veterans Memorial Highway, and Mojave-Barstow Highway.
The Tehachapi Loop is a 3,779-foot-long spiral, or helix, on the Union Pacific Railroad Mojave Subdivision through Tehachapi Pass, of the Tehachapi Mountains in Kern County, south-central California. The line connects Bakersfield and the San Joaquin Valley to Mojave in the Mojave Desert.
Area code 661 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan for the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley and for the far northern part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The numbering plan area comprises most of Kern County, most of northern Los Angeles County, and small parts of Ventura County, Santa Barbara County, and Tulare County. It was created in an area code split of area code 805 on February 13, 1999.
Bakersfield College (BC) is a public community college in Bakersfield, California. BC serves about 27,800 students each semester or 31,000 annually, and offers associate degrees, certificate programs, and is one of fifteen California Community Colleges offering a baccalaureate degree. It is part of the Kern Community College District (KCCD), which is itself part of the California Community Colleges system.
Willow Springs is a village located around a set of former springs in Kern County, California, United States. It is located off of Rosamond Boulevard, 7.5 miles (12 km) west of Rosamond, at an elevation of 2,523 feet (769 m).
Walker Basin is a valley in the Southern Sierra Nevada, in Kern County, California. It is named for Joseph R. Walker, a pioneer in the area.
The Bristol Herald Courier is a daily newspaper owned by Lee Enterprises. The newspaper is located in Bristol, Virginia, a small city located in Southwest Virginia on the Tennessee border.
The 1952 Kern County earthquake occurred on July 21 in the southern San Joaquin Valley and measured 7.3 on the moment magnitude scale. The main shock occurred at 4:52 am Pacific Daylight Time, killed 12 people, injured hundreds more and caused an estimated $60 million in property damage. A small sector of damage near Bealville corresponded to a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), though this intensity rating was not representative of the majority of damage. The earthquake occurred on the White Wolf Fault near the community of Wheeler Ridge and was the strongest to occur in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Havilah was an unincorporated community in Kern County, California that was completely leveled by the 2024 Borel Fire. The land is located in the mountains between Walker Basin and the Kern River Valley, 5 miles (8.0 km) south-southwest of Bodfish at an elevation of 3,136 feet (956 m).
Kern County’s transportation system was quoted as the “unseen industry.” Located at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, the county is at a prime location to ship goods west to the central coast, south to ports in Los Angeles, and east to corridors that connect to the rest of the country. It is also on major corridors that link to all northern points.
The Bakersfield Californian Building is a historic office building in Bakersfield, California. The structure was placed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on March 10, 1983. It was built for the newspaper The Bakersfield Californian.
Alta Newspaper Group Limited Partnership is a Vancouver-based publisher of newspapers in Western Canada and Quebec. It owns three small daily newspapers and more than a dozen weeklies.
The Kern County Sheriff's Office is the agency responsible for law enforcement within Kern County, California, in the United States. The agency provides: law enforcement within the county, maintain the jails used by both the county and municipalities, and provides search and rescue. Its jurisdiction contains all of the unincorporated areas of the county, approximately 8,000 square miles (21,000 km2). The headquarters is in Bakersfield with 15 substations located throughout the county. The metro patrol area is divided into four regions: north, south, east, and west. The Sheriff's Office has over 1,200 sworn officers and civilian employees.
The Lewiston Morning Tribune is an independently owned newspaper in the northwestern United States, located in Lewiston, Idaho. Founded in 1892, it serves eight counties in north-central Idaho and southeastern Washington, the southern portion of the Inland Empire.
The Delano Record was a semi-weekly newspaper serving Delano, California and surrounding area. It ceased publication in 2017 as an individual publication, but appears to have reemerged as a subsection of the Bakersfield.com website.
The Los Banos Enterprise is a newspaper that serves the city of Los Banos, California. The paper is printed bi-weekly and has a circulation of 16,000 copies. The paper had been owned by The McClatchy Company since 2003 until the company sold it in 2022 to Michael Braa.
The Superior Court of California, County of Kern, also known as the Kern County Superior Court or Kern Superior Court, is the California superior court with jurisdiction over Kern County.
