Bealville, California
unincorporated community in Kern County, California, United States
Bealville is an unincorporated community in Kern County, California. It is located on the Union Pacific Railroad (formerly Southern Pacific Railroad) 1.25 miles (2 km) south of Caliente, at an elevation of 1,811 feet (552 m). The area was named after Edward Fitzgerald Beale, who owned the adjacent Rancho El Tejon.
The Southern Pacific Railroad established the Bealville depot and telegraph office on the railroad in 1876 and it remained in service until 1913. A post office operated at Bealville from 1879 to 1881. The town is now registered as California Historical Landmark #741.
California Historical Landmark reads:
NO. 741 BEALVILLE - Edward Fitzgerald Beale, serving under Commodore Stockton in 1846, established his home here on Rancho le Libre in 1855. He also engaged in mining and became Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California and Nevada, and Minister to Vienna.
“Bealville, California” enters the record as unincorporated community in Kern County, California, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bealville, California and unincorporated can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Bealville, California” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bealville, California and unincorporated provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q955585. Authority coordinates are 35.272, -118.626. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1876, 1913, 1879 and 1881.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Bealville, California”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Bealville, California primary sources, Bealville, California archive and Bealville research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bealville, California”?
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- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Bealville, California” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.