One might think of Bakersfield, California, as a remote and simple town where working-class families devote their lives to tradition and self-satisfaction. But according to the major census sites and other observations, Bakersfield, California is a workable area and one of the ‘fastest-growing of the larger cities in the United States.’
After Fresno and Sacramento, Bakersfield is the third largest inland city, equally workable economically. Bakersfield, California, survives on agriculture and petroleum processing (by way of one of the older oil spots, the 100-year-old Kern River Field) and the growing of such crops as carrots, grapes, almonds, citrus, potatoes, and garlic.
The burgeoning yet still conservative Bakersfield, California shows a 2000 population of 247,057 people with a median age of 30, a population which works the farm and the fields but also earns its median income of between $39,982 and $45,556 in the educational, health, social services, and retail fields approximately 66% staying in town for work.
With ranging temperatures of between 40 and 100 degrees throughout the year, Bakersfield, California also features historic restaurants (such as Luigi’s, Maitia’s, Noriega’s,
The Pyrenees and woolgrowers) a popular series of sports (the ever-popular football, baseball, ice hockey, and soccer, as well as the renowned motorsports which have a major following) and world renowned country music, which, evidently, brought such icons as Buck Owens and Merles Haggard to the area to create a unique type of music they call the ‘Bakersfield Sound.’
Bakersfield, California is also known well as being the birthplace of Haggard, as well as of Detroit Lions’ Brock Marion, Detroit Tigers’ Colby Lewis, Washington Redskins’ Cory Hall, Playboy’s Rebekka Armstrong, and NASCAR’s Casey Mears as being the birthplace of Korn members as being the nearby locale of the infamous deaths of police officers celebrate in The Onion Field as being the home to such greats as US Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, country crooner Dwight Yoakum, and child star Brandon Cruz, and as having a status which is mentioned, described, defined, and alluded to in the artwork of everyone from Henry Rollins to The Rolling Stones to Johnny Cash.
And, for those of us who have a simple understanding of Bakersfield, California, we might credit our impressions
to Steinbeck, who show the town and its neighboring landscapes in The Grapes of anger. At the same time, however, Bakersfield has flourished. It has evolved from being the historical establishment housed by Native Americans, then missionaries, gold miners and pioneers and Oakies living off the simple land to a major city with major industry and development.
