Havilah, California
| Havilah | |
|---|---|
| Unincorporated community | |
A replica of the 1868 courthouse was built in 1966 and serves as a museum today. The museum is open weekends April through September.
|
|
 Havilah
|
|
| Coordinates: 35°31′04″N 118°31′07″W / 35.51778°N 118.51861°WCoordinates: 35°31′04″N 118°31′07″W / 35.51778°N 118.51861°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | California |
| County | Kern County |
| Elevation | 3,136 ft (956 m) |
| Reference no. | 100 |
Havilah is an unincorporated community in Kern County, California. It is located in the mountains between Walker Basin and the Kern River Valley, 5 miles (8.0 km) south-southwest of Bodfish at an elevation of 3136 feet (956 m).
Asbury Harpending arrived in the area with a group of Confederate sympathizers in 1864. After finding gold deposits on Clear Creek, a tributary of the Kern River, the group claimed a townsite on the road from Keyesville to Tehachapi and named it after the Biblical land of Havilah, "where there is gold" according to Genesis 2:11. By the end of 1865, Havilah was a boom town with 147 business buildings, thirteen saloons, and a population of nearly a thousand, mostly miners working the Clear Creek Mining District.
Havilah was the county seat at the founding of Kern County on April 2, 1866, and the county's first newspaper, the Havilah Courier, began publication that same year. The county government was moved to Bakersfield in 1874.
A post office operated at Havilah from 1866 to 1918. The Havilah School District, formed in 1866, was the first public school in Kern County.
Nearby historic mining communities include Loraine, (originally named Paris) and Twin Oaks. The town is now registered as California Historical Landmark #100.
Aside from the Old Havilah Cemetery, little remains from the original settlement, most of which was destroyed by fires in the 1920s. A replica of the courthouse and one-room schoolhouse have been constructed near their original locations. The sides of Caliente-Bodfish Road in Havilah are lined with signs marking where other historic buildings once stood.
Accessible by car, Havilah is just over 20 miles (32 km) driving distance from the intersection of State Route 58 and Caliente-Bodfish Road. It is just over 5 driving miles from Bodfish on Caliente-Bodfish Road. There is a local tradition among drivers on Caliente-Bodfish Road: every driver waves at the driver of every other passing vehicle.
...
Wikipedia