ABSTRACT
Kern County is the third-largest county in California; its area of 8,064 square miles exceeds in size the state of Massachusetts. As figure 3-1 shows, Kern County lies astride the southern terminus of the Sierra Nevada and includes a portion of the high Mojave Desert in its eastern third. This chapter is concerned with the western third of Kern County, which encompasses 2,346 square miles of rich agricultural land at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. This is where the largest part of the county's economic activity occurs and where the two largest industries, petroleum and agriculture, are centered. It is also the location of the county seat of Bakersfield, the largest urban area in the county, with a 1980 population of 98,400 (State of California, 1980).
