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One might think of Bakersfield, California as a remote and simple town
where working class families devote their lives to tradition and
complacency. But according to the major census sites and other
observations, Bakersfield, California is a viable area and one of the “fastest-growing of the larger cities in the United States.”
After Fresno and Sacramento, for instance, Bakersfield is the
third-largest inland city, equally viable economically: Bakersfield,
California subsists 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 farms 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, Pyrenees, and Woolgrower’s); a popular series of sports (the ever popular football, baseball, ice hockey, and soccor, as well as the renowned motor sports—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 genre of music they dubbed 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 policemen immortalized 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 reputation which is mentioned, described, defined, and/or 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 depicted the town and its neighboring landscapes in The Grapes of Wrath. At the same time, however, Bakersfield has thrived, and has evolved from being the historical establishment housed by Native Americans, then missionaries, then gold-miners and pioneers and Oakies living off the simple land to a major city with major industry and development.
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