CSUB Public History Institute

05/26/2026

“In 1961, the company donated 375 acres in Southwest Bakersfield to the state for a new state university campus, which you know today as CSUB. In 1967 the company was acquired by Tenneco, which later sold the land to developers Castle and Cooke, developers of Seven Oaks and other subdivisions to this day.”

James Ben Ali Haggin made a fortune in the Gold Rush, before acquiring a huge swath of Kern County.

04/24/2026

03/03/2026

https://www.kvpr.org/podcast/central-valley-roots/2025-06-25/kern-countys-first-oil-pioneers-the-yokuts

The Yokuts used petroleum from natural oil seeps for thousands of years before the modern oil and gas industry.

03/03/2026

The building was a house of worship for decades, and then during World War II, was used to store some of the possessions of local Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps.

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — Not much of Bakersfield’s century-old Japanese Buddhist church is left, but what remains will be preserved – and just in time.  The temple, which dates…

02/23/2026

"The tree became a California State Landmark in 1952. You’ll still find it today on Buttonwillow Drive, one half mile north of Highway 58."

The tree that gives the town its name has been a landmark and meeting place for over 250 years.

02/04/2026

"So when did Kern County earn this imperial distinction? The nickname picked up usage in the 60s and 70s, but it dates all the way back to at least 1940, when the Kern County Board of Trade published a pamphlet with the title “The Golden Empire of Kern County.” A later version of the document from the 1950s extolls the county’s virtues: “As large as Massachusetts. More population and wealth than Nevada. Larger than the combined states of Rhode Island, Delaware and Connecticut... A billion dollars in sunshine.” You get the picture."

https://www.kvpr.org/podcast/central-valley-roots/2025-12-24/how-did-kern-county-get-the-nickname-of-the-golden-empire

02/04/2026

Save the date!!

🎬 Join us for a film screening of Manzanar, Diverted, followed by a conversation with filmmaker Ann Kaneko.

This event is free and open to the public. We hope you’ll join us.

02/04/2026

"Instead of building a depot in Bakersfield, the railroad bypassed the town entirely, and built a new station 2 miles west, calling the new settlement Sumner. The name later changed to Kern City, and it became a part of the City of Bakersfield in 1910. You know it today as Old Town Kern or East Bakersfield."

The Central Pacific and Southern Pacific connected the San Joaquin Valley with the world in the 1870s, founding many local cities and bypassing others.

11/12/2025

https://www.kvpr.org/podcast/central-valley-roots/2025-08-21/the-towns-of-the-kern-river-gold-rush

The gold fields of Kern County gave birth to a number of rough-and-tumble mining towns, some of which still exist today.