Many valley towns owe their existence to the railroads. Today on KVPR's Central Valley Roots, a look at how the route chosen by Central Pacific and Southern Pacific could make – or break – a town’s future.
On May 10, 1869 the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific met at a remote spot in Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Later that same year, the Central Pacific began building a line through middle of the San Joaquin Valley, heading south from Lathrop. a community near Stockton.
By January 1872 the tracks had reached Merced, and by April the same year, they reached a site which would become the new railroad town of Fresno. By August 1872 construction crews reached Goshen, bypassing Visalia by several miles. From there south, the name of the line changed to the Southern Pacific, though the owners were the same. The change reportedly allowed the company to take advantage of government land grants in the area.
By 1874 the rails reached all the way to the small town of Bakersfield – but they also faced resistance. In exchange for building a station, the railroad wanted more land than Bakersfield was willing to give up. The railroad claimed the decision was instead driven by the need for higher ground to avoid flooding on the Kern River.
Instead of building a depot in Bakersfield, the railroad bypassed the town entirely, and built a new station 2 miles west, calling the new settlement Sumner. The name later changed to Kern City, and it became a part of the City of Bakersfield in 1910. You know it today as Old Town Kern or East Bakersfield. The Sumner Depot was built in 1889, and today preservationists are working with the city to save the historic structure.
