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The industrious beavers that have lately reappeared along the Kern River bottom in Bakersfield are reminescent of the reason our city is built in it's present location.

Have you ever wondered why Bakersfield was built  where it is presently located ? 

Thomas (Tommy) Fitzgerald was the first settler to build and live in his house on what is now downtown Bakersfield. He lived in the house while trapping beaver in the Kern River, Buena Vista Lake, Kern Lake and numerous sloughs in the area.  His home was located near 19th and "M" Streets. After he selected this spot to build his cabin, settlers who came later built near this home. Some of the pioneers, who's names are legend, had passed this way before Fitzgerald settled here; Padre Garces, Joseph Reddeford Walker, John C. Freemont, Jedediah S. Smith, Alexis Godey and Elijah Stevens are a few, but none of these great explorers settled here.

Tommy Fitzgerald was one of those legendary "mountain men" who  fur trapped and hunted in the Rocky Mountains during the 1820's and 30's. Little is known about him previous to his being one of the fifty mountain men in the 1833-34 Joseph Walker expedition that left the annual rendezvous on the Green River in eastern Utah, in July 1833. This is where Tommy Fitzgerald joined Walker's party. The expedition's goal was to explore, find a usable trail from Utah to the Pacific Ocean and trap furs along the way.

This party crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains over Mono Pass. They then entered what is now Yosemite National Park where they were the first white men to view the wonderous water falls and giant redwood trees. They then traveled west to the San Francisco Bay area then down the coast to Monterey, the Mexican Capitol of California at that time.  They spent the winter as welcomed guests of the Mexican Government.

In the spring of 1834 the party traveled east to the San Joaquin Valley, then heading south along the slopes of the Sierras. They explored and trapped along most of the rivers running out of the mountains. When they arrived in the Kern County area they followed the old Indian trail that ran through Lynn's Valley and what later became Glennville. From here they crossed over the Greenhorn Mountains, then through "Walkers Pass" which was named for the leader of this party.

It seems Tommy Fitzgerald, liked the green, spacious, Linn's Valley  so much he  returned and built an adobe trading post at the junction of those two Indian trails at the present town of Glennville.  Tommy called it his "fort" because it was built like a fort with walls three feet thick and small, square, "porthole" type windows. He traded with the Indians and fur trappers passing through on the ancient trail over Greenhorn Mountains to the Mojave desert and after the Kern River gold rush began in the early  1850's, his merchandise business boomed for a couple of years.

With help from the friendly Yokuts Indians, Fitzgerald built the tamped earth, adobe trading post  sometime in the mid 1840's, long before the California gold rush began. He then built the house at "Kern Island", (now Bakersfield), during the 1850's as a hunting and trapping lodge at which he could reside in the winter and then move up to his Glennville trading post during the heat of summer. This adobe house is the oldest standing residence in Kern County and is today located at Glennville adjacent to the County Fire Station. It is a registrated State Historical Landmark, preserved and maintained by the Kern County Historical Society.

The beaver pelt business died out in the 1850's because the top hats that for years had been made from beaver fur were then being made from silk. The price for beaver pelts dropped 50 percent. Fitzgerald built the first house in Bakersfield near what is now 19th and "M" Streets as a headquarters for his beaver trapping and hunting. Tule Elk, antelope and waterfowl, which were numerous near Bakersfield back then, were his means of making a living.  In the 1850's, he sold the fresh and dried meat to the Army at Fort Tejon  as well as to merchants at Visalia.

In the late 1850's, Fitzgerald sold Bakersfield's first house to Christian Bonah, a farmer who had migrated from Texas with his family. Bonah realized the agricultural potential of this area and began farming the rich soil.

Fitzgerald and Colonel Thomas Baker, founder of Bakersfield, met in Visalia in 1858. Baker was living in Visalia at that time and interested in swamp land reclamation. Fitzgerald, being familiar with Kern's lakes and swamps, agreed to a canoe trip with the colonel to the local area. They canoed from Tulare Lake by way of Goose Lake Slough to Buena Vista Lake. then to Kern Lake and from there up Kern River to Fitzgerals's old house,(now owned by Bonah), on the present site of Bakersfield. Baker was so impressed with the site that in 1863, he moved his family into this house which he had purchased from Christian Bonah. Bonah had also built an additional house of logs next to the origional structure. From this site Colonel Baker founded the present town of Bakersfield.

Tommy Fitzgerald, now a very old man, retired to his beloved "fort" at Glennville to live out his years. The man who selected the site on which now stands Bakersfield was a local legend in those times and in 1877 he died in his adobe home in Glennville. His solitary grave can be found on a beautiful, green, hillside,  5 miles north of Glennville, at the south end of Sand Flat. A cast iron enclosure marks the gravesite from which can be viewed the entire Lynns Valley.