The foothills of the Southern Sierra missed out on most of the action in the first years of the California Gold Rush. But all that changed in the mountains of Kern County in 1851. Today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots, the story of the Kern River gold rush.
Four years after John Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, a member of John C. Fremont’s expedition discovered gold in Greenhorn Gulch in the Greenhorn Mountains northeast of Bakersfield.
Soon prospectors made other gold discoveries near the Kern River, setting off a localized gold rush. Almost overnight, new communities popped up to serve the miners. Towns like Whiskey Flat, also known as Old Kernville, Petersburg, Glennville, and Keyesville, emerged as rough-and-tumble mining towns. One of the most prominent was Havilah and in 1866, it became the county seat of the newly formed Kern County. It would hold that title until 1874 when the seat of county government moved to Bakersfield…