Historic Kern home to be featured on Howser show

The storied history of a Bakersfield home will be the subject of one of Huell Howser's upcoming shows on public television.

BY STACEY SHEPARD, Californian staff writer
e-mail: sshepard@bakersfield.com | Monday, May 28 2007 9:45 PM
Last Updated: Monday, May 28 2007 9:48 PM

The Victorian-style house, now located at the southwest corner of Rosedale Highway and Calloway Drive, was built in downtown Bakersfield in the early 1900s by a legendary foreman at the Tejon Ranch.

In March, the Kern County Museum voted to add the house to its collection of historic structures.

Howser's visit in June will coincide with the museum's kickoff campaign to raise the $300,000 needed to move and restore the house. Howser, along with Bob Stine, Tejon Ranch's president and CEO, will serve as co-honorary chairmen of the museum's effort.

Museum officials were drawn to the home's history after learning that it was built by Jose Lopez, who managed Tejon Ranch for most of the nearly 60 years he worked there. Lopez earned a legendary reputation for a daring sheep drive he led from Tejon to Wyoming shortly after he started work there.

Lopez died in 1939 and the home was eventually purchased by another owner and moved to its current location in Rosedale.

The effort to have the home moved to the museum was spear-headed by two daughters of the home's most recent owner, Lavern Hill, who died in 2005.

"We think it's great," said Hill's daughter Glenda Rankin of Howser's plans to film a show about the house. "I think it will give the exposure that we need to get more people all across the state involved in the project."

Hill and her husband purchased the home in the 1960s after moving to California from Oklahoma. Hill developed an attachment to the house and went to extraordinary means to keep it after her divorce in 1971.

At the age of 46, she moved out of the home in order to rent it and learned to drive so she could take a job as a clerk at the Salvation Army's thrift store to pay off the mortgage.

Hill also had a fondness for the Kern County Museum's collection of old homes. She often told her daughters that she hoped her home could someday be put on display there.

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