Did You Say “Baker’s Field”?

About the Book

Bakersfield, California has grown in population an amount of about 25 times in the last century. This book tries to show why it grew and some of the delightful ways and exotic immigrants that it took to get there. It tries to take the reader from its geographic beginning, through the prehistoric days of Indian culture and the immigration of various cults and races that settled there, and on to the petroleum, agri-culture, and commercial enterprises that made people financially stable to have them feel pleasantly at home. It tries to tell you that the warm dry summers and non-freezing winters are delightful, even if you have to go elsewhere to ski.

About the Author

Eugene F. Cassady was born in Bakersfield in 1923. He was raised in a family that had been in Bakers-field since 1885. He attended local schools there through high school. He received an academic scholarship to the University of California in 1940, but WWII interrupted his education and he joined the Navy. He returned after the war and got his BA degree in 1949. He married in 1950 and found out during his honeymoon that a war had started in Korea and he was a member of the Naval Reserve. The next year was spent at war on a destroyer. After Korea, he went back to graduate school at UCLA and got an MBA Degree and then worked to become a Certified Public Accountant, which he has practiced for the last 68 years. As a CPA with a computer he has had fun writing various things, including this book.