Tehachapi and Surrounding Ghost Towns, California

On a recent trip to Southern California, I made a discovery: there are hundreds, even thousands of “Ghost Towns” in America. A ghost town is an abandoned town because for one reason or another there were no more people living in these towns.

This discovery came when driving on Route 58 going to Bakersfield for an overnight stop.  Route 14 intersects Route 58 near the town of Mojave and runs north. It is there that I learned about a number of ghost towns hardly 30 miles north of Mojave.  These towns abandoned and in decay date back to the early 1900s and were built as glorified camps during the California Gold Rush, or to store building materials for the California Aqueduct, and anything in between.  All these towns were built next to train tracks, and had saloons, brothels and a General Store.

Ghost Towns can be visited if one is interested in history and photography. Some of the towns near Route 14 North are Brown, Leliter, Freeman, Goler, Havila and Silver City to name a few. Often there is little to see, but other times what one cannot see can be dangerous! Consider the ghost town of Silver Queen off of Route 14, just south of Mojave city. It is a town where toxic chemicals have been dumped seemingly in a hap hazardous way. One is warned about toxic chemicals in pits and buckets that are either not covered or questionably sealed. One can see large (50 gallon) drums here and there still full of toxic chemicals. In fact, a website describing Silver Queen recommends NOT traveling there with children…! Hmm.

Other Ghost Towns have a very unique history. Take the town of Allensworth founded in 1908 by a former slave who reached the rank of colonel in the US military. The town was built and financed by African Americans with the goal that its 300 residents will be an example of a population living with self-respect. Allensworth became a ghost town when its water table dropped drastically and its residents left town. Today Allensworth is a state park with a few blocks of the old town still standing.

… On the way to Bakersfield, there is the town to Tehachapi. It is not a ghost town but a bucolic area on the train line. It was a cold January day with heavy fog covering the mountain tops that surround the town.

There are few attractions in town one of them is Kronen’s German Bakery. On that humid, cold evening the aroma of bread, especially crusty rye, was most welcoming.  The sandwiches are sized to satisfy the hunger of a lumberjack, and the many varieties of German beer to quench any thirst.  One should not leave the bakery without a bag of warm Brötchen, the crusty German breakfast rolls.

The train passes regularly by and thru Tehachapi. I wanted to capture both the active moment of the train passing by and the relative loneliness of this town. So, put my 1970s Nikkor 105mm lens through the fence next to the train lines hoping for the contrast. 

And it happened when a railroad worker walked over the tracks after the train passed. I would not have hoped for anything better than loud-mouth Raven that descended upon the tracks as the employee passed by surrounded by the fog coming down the mountains.

Finally, it seems the other major attraction of Tehachapi is an Ostrich farm.  There were plenty of signs in the street (“street” not “streets” as the town is rather small…).

Even the local burger joint advertised ostrich meat. I recalled my last experience with the overcooked ostrich meat that required a wolf’s teeth to cut through, and stayed away from that restaurant….

So, Ghost Towns are dilapidated, decaying towns from the past century across California and the rest of the US. Some are kept in better shape – the most famous is Bodie, in California. There are more than 200 original and perfectly preserved structures still standing from this town built in 1859. These structures include a schoolhouse, a jail, and of course a saloon. Bodie had a population of 10,000 during the 1880s. But with the Gold Rush coming to an end, Bodie was a ghost town by 1942.

… My mother used to say “Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.” So, if history regarding Ghost Towns will repeat itself, where will it be?

And I could not recall a Forbes article from December 5, 2014 where a statement by Bill Gates was discussed.  Gates reported that between 2011 and 2013, China consumed 6.6 gigatons of concrete – that’s more than the U.S. used in the entire 20th century. Indeed, that trend seems to continue, as China’s official news agency Xinhua reported that urban planning in China has for goal to provide housing for 3.4 billion people.

But… since the present population of China is only 1.4 billion, will building housing for 2 more billion people result in building new age Ghost Towns? 

Or perhaps China knows something we do not.

January 25, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016