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Clear skies. Low 79F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..
Clear skies. Low 79F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Sheriff Charlie Dodge, running for reelection, in a 1970 parade.
Mannequins survived the 1952 earthquake, but a young mother was killed at Lerner's Dress Shop.
The Beale Clock Tower was razed after undergoing significant damage in the 1952 earthquake.
Downtown buildings sustained damage in the 1952 earthquake.
The Tegeler Hotel was repaired after sustaining damage in the 1952 earthquake.
Robert Price is an Emmy award-winning reporter-commentator for KGET-TV. His column appears here Sundays. Reach him at RPrice661@gmail.com or via Twitter: @stubblebuzz. The opinions expressed are his own.
Sheriff Charlie Dodge, running for reelection, in a 1970 parade.
Mannequins survived the 1952 earthquake, but a young mother was killed at Lerner's Dress Shop.
The Beale Clock Tower was razed after undergoing significant damage in the 1952 earthquake.
Downtown buildings sustained damage in the 1952 earthquake.
The Tegeler Hotel was repaired after sustaining damage in the 1952 earthquake.
The image must have been an indelible one: Two Bakersfield police officers, powdered head to foot in cascading white dust, answering one frantic call after another, desks askew, floors littered with paper and chunks of fallen plaster.
Assistant Chief Charlie Dodge bolted into the police station, having just driven past clusters of anxious townsfolk gathered on front lawns, some in their summer slumber-wear, too frightened to go back inside and too stunned to be self-conscious by their appearances.
The pre-dawn earthquake had caused Dodge’s own wood-frame house to creak mightily for 45 terrifying seconds, and the streets of his immediate neighborhood were wet from the collapsed water tank that had tumbled like a slain Goliath 100 feet onto the asphalt, sending a tumult of water and steel rivets gushing down Bernard Street.
The coming hours and days would be like nothing he’d seen before. The third-most powerful earthquake in recorded California history, then and still, struck at 4:56 that morning, July 21, 1952 — 70 years ago this week. The magnitude 7.3 earthquake, centered near Tehachapi, killed 11 people in that small mountain town and a 12th in equally devastated Arvin. And the worst, in terms of structural and cultural loss, was yet to come.
Dodge called ahead that morning and instructed desk Sgt. Edward Olson and Lt. Albert J. Mier, the overnight watch commander, to summon all reserves and off-duty officers. Then, disheveled from his hasty dash to the office, Dodge walked into what looked like the aftermath of a bombing. It was hard to see through the haze: Remnants of “gingerbread” crown molding that had lined the edges of the building’s high ceilings had crashed onto the floor, sending up clouds of pulverized plaster and covering everything, including the men in what had previously been blue.
While Olson and Mier barked instructions and reassurance into phones and two-way radios, occasionally ducking the falling chunks of plaster that continued to work themselves loose, Dodge tended to other matters, including an injured officer: Patrolman Lewis Moss had been in the squad room writing up reports from the previous night’s interactions when he was struck by a chunk of falling plaster. He was taken to the hospital with a minor leg injury.
Police Chief Horace Grayson, who’d survived corruption charges leveled by the city manager three years before, now faced the greatest public emergency of his career — and he’d been on a fishing trip in the high Sierra when it presented itself. Dodge eventually managed to reach him, but until the chief could make it back to Bakersfield, the assistant chief was in charge.
Dodge joined the Bakersfield Police Department as a patrolman in 1937 and advanced to the rank of assistant police chief, a position he held for 16 years. When, upon Grayson’s pending 1966 retirement, it became clear the outgoing chief would be endorsing another candidate, Jack Towle, Dodge took a three-month leave of absence from the department to campaign for sheriff. He defeated the incumbent and served two terms.
He established the county's first helicopter patrol, was the first sheriff to operate the Lerdo jail and created the first countywide narcotics task force. For decades after his retirement from public life, Dodge was one of the primary go-to guys for local historians, and 16 years after his passing his archived interviews remain a great resource. He spoke to library archivists at Cal State Bakersfield and UC Berkeley, among others, as did his wife, Lt. Mary Holman Dodge, the city’s first female officer.
But Dodge’s most useful memoir might have been a little known, 100-page document, "Personal History of the Bakersfield Police Chiefs from 1933 Through 1966," written when Dodge was 77 (so, about 1987) and typed on a manual typewriter by a dedicated, 79-year-old retired sheriff’s department secretary. It sheds light on some fascinating moments in time, and the 1952 earthquake — actually a series of seismic events that terrorized the county for 33 days — was one such chapter.
What follows are excerpts from Dodge’s history of how Kern County and the Bakersfield Police Department dealt with the crisis.
On July 21, 1952, the first of two summer earthquakes struck Bakersfield and Kern County. The first quake, which struck in the early morning, had a magnitude of 7.5 on the Richter scale (later downgraded to 7.3) and lasted for 45 seconds. The quake was felt from Modesto to the Imperial Valley. The epicenter was determined to be the White Wolf fault in a cotton field some 20 miles southeast of Bakersfield.
The hardest-hit populated area was the city of Tehachapi. The business district in that small city was nearly totally wrecked. ...
I can recall this early morning event clearly as though it occurred yesterday. I was awakened by the rolling machine motion. I ran to my front room window and looked out in a southwesterly direction just in time to see a large explosion at the Paloma refinery located near what is now the Buena Vista Lake area. ...
The downtown and East Bakersfield business districts had nearly every plate glass window broken out of the buildings. There was much structural damage, but most of it was not visible from the street. Regular officers and reserves responded without delay, and there was no looting reported in the city.
By noon nearly every display window had been boarded up and some of the officers were relieved to get some rest before returning for 12-hour night shifts. About the only damage done to residences were brick chimneys falling off. Some old brick homes were structurally damaged for a complete 24-hour period. There was not a single crime or vehicular accident recorded in the city limits.
The Tehachapi State Prison was then an institution for women felons. It was made of unreinforced brick and suffered heavy damage. The Navy furnished tents, a field kitchen and other equipment and the 475 women inmates were moved into these in the outer prison yard. Gov. Earl Warren responded to the area to survey the damage.
Railroad traffic was halted over the Tehachapi mountains as many of the railroad tunnels had caved in, and the tracks were broken and twisted by the force of the quake. Rail traffic was not restored for several weeks. On July 23 at 12:45 a.m. and 6 a.m. the county suffered two major aftershocks measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale, which created more damage to already weakened structures. Damage to the county was measured in the multimillions of dollars.
City building inspector Larry Hensch ruled that the City Hall (which then also housed the police department) was damaged to the point that it was unsafe for occupancy. City Manager Lee Gunn reassigned (Dodge) to find quarters for the department. The building at 1300 17th St. on the corner of 17th and L streets was vacant and Mr. Gunn approved it after the one story structure had been given the building inspector’s OK.
Chief Grayson was finally located on the day of the first quake and he returned to the city late that afternoon. He had to approve the 17th Street building. We began moving immediately, first getting radio and telephone communications equipment installed. Moving in with the police department were the city manager's office, the mayor — then Frank Sullivan — and the city attorney and his staff, who were practically “sitting on each other's laps” in this relatively small one room structure.
Temporary partitions were installed by motor officers Harley and Alfred Kimball, who had been journeyman carpenters prior to joining the department. Other city offices moved to fire station number one at 21st and H streets and after a day or so it was business as usual in the downtown area.
Some of the older two and three story hotels were ruled unsafe and occupants had to move. Many transients and newer arrivals from the Midwest left the city to return to Oklahoma and other Midwest states. They had had enough of California earthquakes.
At 3:41 p.m., Aug. 22, 1952, a second quake shook the city of Bakersfield. This quake, rather than being of a rolling nature, was an extremely sharp, jolting type. It was determined to be a localized quake on the Kern River fault, with the epicenter near the city limits.
Two persons were killed by falling debris and brick walls in the city. One man lost his life at the Kern County Equipment Company building in the 1600 block of East 19th Street. A woman shopper was killed at Lerner’s Dress Shop at the 1400 block of 19th Street. Parapets and walls that had been weakened by the July quake and its aftershocks came tumbling down all over the east and west Bakersfield business districts. It was only after this quake that the building inspectors actually realized how much structural damage had been inflicted in the earlier quakes.
Regular reserves and war emergency reserves were called to duty. Officers were put on 12-hour shifts with all vacations and days off canceled. For a period of three weeks after this disaster, the entire west downtown area was blocked off to all traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian.
The 17th Street temporary police headquarters building required only minimal re-bracing of walls and continued in use throughout the disaster period in 1952.
Nearly all of the second story downtown hotels and businesses and professional structures were topped off to one story. Many transients and others who lived in the many hotel rooms camped out in Central Park until they moved on or found other shelter. The county courthouse was declared unsafe and offices were moved to tents and other undamaged wooden structures at the fairgrounds. The county jail with all its barred steel held up and was still in use. But the front office section facing Truxtun Avenue had to be reinforced. Old City Hall was torn down by the use of cutting torches on the heavy steel reinforcements that were found.
The City Council, which had been meeting in the courthouse since the July quake, moved to a new meeting place at Carpenters Hall, 911 20th St. The council authorized the demolition of the clock tower structure which was located in the middle of the intersection of 17th Street and Chester Avenue. This large, unlit structure had been hit by two vehicles after the quake including a new 1952 model police car operated by Patrolman Art Pellittieri. The chief was the catalyst in getting this hazard removed over the protests of historical groups. The clockworks were saved and are now installed in the replica tower at Pioneer Village.
This was the most devastating pair of earthquakes ever recorded in Bakersfield and Kern County. Practically every public building and all the city schools suffered severe damage, and many had to be replaced. Bakersfield’s downtown area, with many second and third stories lopped off, was changed forever.
Robert Price is an Emmy award-winning reporter-commentator for KGET-TV. His column appears here Sundays; the views expressed are his own. Reach him at rprice661@gmail.com or via Twitter: @stubblebuzz.
Robert Price is an Emmy award-winning reporter-commentator for KGET-TV. His column appears here Sundays. Reach him at RPrice661@gmail.com or via Twitter: @stubblebuzz. The opinions expressed are his own.
What happened to Kern County that summer 70 years ago, and how did it change the face of Bakersfield forever? See Robert Price’s TV special, “The 1952 Earthquake: 33 Days That Changed Bakersfield” this Thursday evening, July 21, on KGET-TV 17.
Positive Cases Among Kern Residents: 264,803
Recovered and Presumed Recovered Residents: 248,717
Percentage of all cases that are unvaccinated: 73.56
Percentage of all hospitalizations that are unvaccinated: 83.37
Source: Kern County Public Health Services Department
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