Rosedale Hotel

Written by Bakersfield Magazine

By 1890, the Kern County Land Company was in full-force, cultivating the surrounding areas of Bakersfield. The plan was to colonize sections of land within a few miles of town. One section, in particular, was called The Rosedale Colony. In all, there were 12,000 acres of land in the tract that had been divided into 20-acre farms. The Kern County Land Company was offering them at terms of one-fourth cash and the remainder in one, two, and three years; or three, four, and five years. Yearly interest was at the low rate of seven percent.

Large numbers of English and American families were being tempted to move to this area with promises of what the soil could do. The Kern County Land Company recruited colonizers from England and put them up at the Rosedale Hotel, a specially-built hotel to house potential land buyers. The hotel served a great purpose as it allowed prospective owners to actually visit the site with land agent S.W. Fergusson and be shown the growing potential of the land. In fact, the Rosedale Raisin Vineyard Company loved the land so much they purchased 320 acres in January of 1890.

These early colonizers had to do a lot of imagining, however, since at the time there was not a fence, ditch, house, shrub, or vine in Rosedale Colony. Yet just eight months into the Kern County Land Company’s push to colonize the area, houses dotted the countryside and grapes, peanuts, potatoes, melons, and other vegetables were growing nicely, fed with water from the Great Calloway Canal, which was one of the largest irrigating canals in the world.

Shortly thereafter, a two-story schoolhouse was necessary, and a church and general stores were soon to follow turning Rosedale Colony into a bustling suburb of Bakersfield.

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Article appeared in our 28-5 Issue - December 2011