Bakersfield’s Stockdale neighborhood isn’t just one of the city’s most desirable areas, it also has a fascinating history, dating back over 130 years. Today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots, the story of Lloyd Tevis and the history of Stockdale.
You can’t tell the history of Kern County without Lloyd Tevis and his business partner James Ben Ali Haggin. The two Kentuckians joined forces in Sacramento in 1850. Tevis eventually made a fortune in the telegraph business, becoming president of Wells Fargo in 1872. He held the same title for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Haggin and Tevis, alongside George Hearst (William Randolph’s dad) were also partners in gold and copper mines. But here in the Central Valley, Haggin and Tevis had a different sort of gold: land. They used the Desert Land Act to acquire vast holdings in Kern County, some 300,000 acres, which became the Kern County Land Company.
In 1896, his son William Tevis used some of the land to build a 9,000 square foot home on 300 acres west of Bakersfield. But despite his wealth and connections, (William’s wife Mabella was the daughter of California’s first Hispanic governor), failed business ventures left him nearly broke by the 1920s.
William's son Lloyd P. Tevis hatched a plan to turn the Tevis Estate into a golf course, giving us today’s Stockdale Country Club, and the highway we know today. As for the name, that’s in honor of another Tevis relative, Sir Edmund Stockdale, who served for a time as Lord Mayor of London.
