The Yokut Indians were the first people to settle in the San Joaquin Valley, some 8000 years ago. In 1776, the Spanish missionary Father Francisco Garcés was the first European to reach the area. In 1851 gold was discovered in the Kern River, and in 1865 the first discovery of oil was made in the valley. Overnight it changed from a placid farm town to a wild mining community, complete with gunfights and gambling halls. Settlements grew up, and the place soon became known as “Colonel Baker’s field”, after one of the local settlers. When Colonel Tom Baker was given the assignment of surveying a township in 1869, the town was given the official name of “Bakersfield”.

The town continued to grow, and reached a population of about 300 by 1869, and 800 by 1871. Adversities such as the floods of 1867 and 1893, and the fires of 1889 and 1919, did not reverse this trend. On May 27, 1898, the San Joaquin Valley Railroad arrived in Bakersfield, giving a great boost to population. Then, in the 1930s, the Dust Bowl brought a great influx of migrant workers from the Great Plains, Arkansas and Oklahoma taking work mostly in agriculture and the oil industry. In John Steinbeck’s historical novel The Grapes of Wrath, Bakersfield is one of the locations that the protagonists pass through. In later years, farm work in the area has mostly been conducted by Mexican immigrants. In the 1960s, César Chávez led the fight to improve working conditions for migrant farm workers.

The great earthquake of July 21, 1952, changed the appearance of Bakersfield, promoting the flat, sprawling style of building that dominates the city today.