METTLER, Calif. (KGET) — This tiny farming burg south of Bakersfield has a population of 66 — and dropping. Since its founding in the 1940s by potato farmer Clifford Alvin Mettler, Mettler has been kind of a place to avoid.
The July 1952 Kern County earthquake, magnitude 7.3, was centered just a couple miles down the road at Wheeler Ridge. Between that quake and an August aftershock, Bakersfield and Tehachapi were devastated and 12 people died. At least Mettler, lacking in two-story buildings, came out looking pretty much the same.
Three years later, September 1955, actor James Dean tore through Mettler Station, as the town was originally called, in his ‘55 Porsche Spyder, stopping just long enough to get a speeding ticket for going 65 in a 55. 100 miles north and a little over two hours later, he was dead at age 24.
Thousands get in line to be the first inside Hard Rock Casino Tejon
Then, in March 1963, near a gas-line ditch a mile and a quarter south of the Clifford Mettler Ranch, a crime that chilled the nation to its core — the Onion Field killings. One police officer shot dead, another harrowingly escapes — a tense manhunt, a best selling book, a gripping film…