Welcome to Bakersfield Digest!

We plan to share the fun and interesting things happening in Bakersfield and also highlight the people and places that make our city so unique.

Thanks for checking us out. Since this is a newsletter about Bakersfield let’s take a quick dive into how exactly our City came to be.

Named after Colonel Thomas Baker, Bakersfield California was incorporated in 1873. According to an article written on Bakersfield.com “Settlers were coming to the place known as Kern Island, and a town was springing up as both a marketplace and a supply center. It was to Kern Island in 1863 that Baker moved his young wife, Ellen M. Whalen, whom he had married in 1857, and his children, daughters May and Nellie and son Thomas. Here he began the hospitality that gave statewide renown to the place travelers came to know as “Baker’s Field.” The rising town took this name and a post office was established in 1869. Ever since it’s founding Bakersfield has had it’s roots in the oil and agriculture industries. These jobs brought settlers from all over the country looking for honest work and a chance at the American dream. Between 1970 and 2010 Bakersfield was one of the fastest growing cities in California expanding from 70,000 residents to over 347,000. Today Bakersfield has a population of nearly 400,000.