Where The Heck is Inyokern?

LOCATION:

Find Bakersfield California (about 80 miles north of Los Angeles) on a map and follow State Route 178 east through Lake Isabella to State Route 14. Inyokern is located in and around a triangle formed by State Route 14 on the west, State Route 178 on the south and U.S. Route 395 on the east.

A BRIEF HISTORY:

Inyokern, located in the southwestern corner of the Indian Wells Valley, at the foot of the eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range, was known in 1909 only as "Siding 16" when Southern Pacific laid tracks from Mojave through the present town to the Owens Valley. The community took the name of "Magnolia" when the first post office opened in 1913. The name was eventually changed to Inyokern because of the close proximity of the Inyo and Kern County borders.

Between 1908 and 1930 many people came to this area to homestead under conditions set up by the Desert Entry Act. Inyokern flourished as a trading center and supply station for the company building the L.A. aqueduct. Community buildings and business establishments were constructed. Then came the depression and costly irrigation methods which contributed to it's decline during the late 1920's.

In the early 1930's, State Route 14 and U.S. 395 were paved and many city people took advantage of the improved driving conditions to come to the desert to sightsee and prospect for minerals.

A sign, posted as you leave the town proper, states the population as 970. There are probably several thousand more people living in the immediate vicinity who claim Inyokern as their home.

Just ten miles to the east of Inyokern is the main gate to the Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake, home of one of the nations most sophisticated research and development centers that got it's start in 1943. Adjoining the Base on the southeastern corner of the valley is the City of Ridgecrest.

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