Worth the trip

If country music and multiple Basque restaurants, including several eateries featured on Guy Fieri’s show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, whet your appetite, then it’s worth a trip.

There are numerous hotels in the city, but none with as flamboyant a history as the Padre Hotel in the heart of downtown. Constructed at the height of Bakersfield’s oil boom in 1928, the eight-story Spanish Colonial Revival hotel had a flashy beginning spurred by the excesses of oil money and the Roaring 1920s. In 1954, a fiery fellow named Milton “Spartacus” Miller purchased the Padre, and for the next 45 years until his death, he clashed with city officials over multiple building code violations. The battle became so contentious that Miller draped massive protest banners on the hotel’s exterior and mounted a rocket on the rooftop aimed at city hall.

After Miller’s death, the hotel fell into dereliction until it was sold and renovated. The Padre reopened in 2010 as Bakersfield’s only four-star hotel.

Much of the city’s downtown still retains its original footprint with former landmark buildings repurposed for new uses, such as the old S.H. Kress and Woolworth variety stores. One can’t help but notice the lack of mature vegetation in the older section of downtown, eliciting a dried-up ghost town atmosphere.

Bakersfield has long been called “Nashville West” for its unique brand of country music dominated by a sharp Fender Telecaster guitar-driven honky-tonk sound. Country legends Buck Owens and Merle Haggard popularized the music known as “The Bakersfield Sound.”

Rooster’s Honky Tonk is walking distance from the Padre Hotel. Belly up to the bar to try more than 100 brands of tequila. Dance or simply retreat to the patio to people-watch. Rooster’s romps Wednesdays through Saturdays, 4 p.m. to closing.

To see some headline country performers, Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace is live Thursday through Saturday nights. The 550-seat venue features a restaurant, bar, gift shop, and the Buck Owens Museum. Patrons can dine on Brad Paisley’s fish and chips or Dwight Yoakam’s baby back ribs. For dessert, finish with Buck’s Palace Mud Pie.

One of the largest Basque populations outside of the Pyrenees Mountains is found in Bakersfield. Many of these families are descendants of the region near the western end of the Pyrenees Mountains on the coast between northeastern Spain and southwestern France. Basque migration to California peaked during the late 1800s following the discovery of gold. When the gold rush dried up, Basque immigrants turned to ranching in the Central Valley. Bakersfield is home to the most Basque restaurants in the United States, which carry on the tradition of multicourse feasts served family style.

About 40 miles east on State Route 58 up the Tehachapi Mountains Pass is the world-famous Tehachapi Loop, an engineering railroad marvel still operational today. It was completed in 1876 by Chinese laborers who cut through solid and decomposed granite with picks, shovels, and blasting powder to create a single track. Rising at a two-percent grade, the track gains 77 feet and makes a 1,210-foot diameter circle. The Tehachapi Loop was the final railroad link connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles.

After a day of sightseeing, stop into Guthrie’s Alley Cat for a nightcap at one of Bakersfield’s original pre-World War II dive bars. Guthrie’s is a two-minute stroll from the Padre. The bar features a garish neon sign with a blinking-eyed black cat. Like an old saloon, all heads turn toward the front door to see who’s entering. The bartender, a muscular bearded mountain man, seemed to take his aggressions out by intensely agitating the martini shaker. A faded mural by celebrity caricaturist Al Hirschfeld covers an entire wall.

Optimal seasons to visit Bakersfield and surrounding areas are spring and fall. Summers are seriously toasty, and winter snowstorms often prompt highway closures in Tehachapi.

Holly Kress-Hall and her husband, George Hall, flew their 1980 Cessna 340A to Bakersfield for this story. She is a freelance writer and retired U.S. Air Force journalist living in San Diego County, California.