Tehachapi, California
city in Kern County, California, United States
Tehachapi ( ; Kawaiisu: Tihachipia, meaning "hard climb") is a city in Kern County, California, United States, in the Tehachapi Mountains, at an elevation of 3,970 feet (1,210 m), between the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. Tehachapi is 35 miles (56 km) east-southeast of Bakersfield, and 20 miles (32 km) west of Mojave. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 10 square miles (26 km2). As of the 2020 census, Tehachapi had a population of 12,939. The Tehachapi area is known for the nearby Tehachapi Loop (a popular railfan site), the Pacific Crest Trail and for the favorable weather conditions for the aerial sport of gliding.
History
The Kawaiisu people (also Nuwu ("people" in Kawaiisu), or Nuooah) are the Native American tribe whose homeland was the Tehachapi Valley, and seasonally the southern Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert, for thousands of years.
One possibility for the origin of the name Tehachapi comes from the Kawaiisu language. It may be derived from the word for "hard climb" or tihachipia, according to the Tomi-Kahni Resource Center. The settlement has been formerly known and spelled as: Tehachapai; Tehachapa; Tehachepi; Tehachipi; and Summit Station. According to Yokuts informant Wahumchah, recorded by anthropologist Frank Forrest Latta, Tehachapi derives from a Yokuts-Ute amalgam, from Yokuts taheech[e] "oak-covered flat" + Ute pah' "water" (cl.
“Tehachapi, California” enters the record as city in Kern County, California, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tehachapi, California and city can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q985253. VIAF identifies the subject as 153648702. The Library of Congress control number is n83226114. Authority coordinates are 35.132, -118.449. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tehachapi, 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.