Mostly clear. Low near 65F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph..
Mostly clear. Low near 65F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph.
An old bottle neck sticks above the ground at a former Tehachapi dumpsite from the early part of the 20th century.
Items remaining at the old dumpsite include a rusted graniteware pan, a zinc-coated canning jar lid, and broken pieces of dishes, many of them shattered in the 1952 Tehachapi earthquake.
Assorted broken glass at the dumpsite, including a Coca Cola bottle and old brown glass beer bottles.
A remnant of a deer antler that a proud hunter once nailed to a wall.
Pieces of rusted iron and steel are among the most durable items at old dumps.
An old bottle neck sticks above the ground at a former Tehachapi dumpsite from the early part of the 20th century.
Items remaining at the old dumpsite include a rusted graniteware pan, a zinc-coated canning jar lid, and broken pieces of dishes, many of them shattered in the 1952 Tehachapi earthquake.
Assorted broken glass at the dumpsite, including a Coca Cola bottle and old brown glass beer bottles.
A remnant of a deer antler that a proud hunter once nailed to a wall.
Pieces of rusted iron and steel are among the most durable items at old dumps.
Not far from where I live on Cherry Lane there are traces of an old dumpsite, a place where people from the little town of Tehachapi, a couple of generations ago, used to take their discards and leave them behind amid the scattered rabbitbrush in a country field.
Over the years I’ve wandered around the site, examining the bits and pieces of early 20th century America: the assorted broken bottles in various colors, rusted iron objects, pottery shards, discarded cans, etc.
It appears that the location was used until about 70 years ago. My Uncle Hank told me that when the 1952 earthquake hit, people all over Tehachapi experienced lots of damage — even though nearly all frame houses were left standing, there was so much shaking and earth movement that dishes smashed to the floor, bottles flew out of cupboards, items tumbled off shelves and there was lots of breakage.
After they had cleaned up the resulting mess, some local residents brought the remains to the dump near me and tossed it there. The site wasn’t used much after that.
When I was growing up, the city of Tehachapi had an official burn dump up above Highline Road, in what is now Mountain Meadows. It seems so unlikely now, but when I was a kid, you could haul your trash there, then before you left you set it on fire.
Some people, like my uncle, hung around until their fire had died down, but I remember other people igniting their trash pile, making sure that it was fully engulfed and then hopping in their truck and driving away.
The burn dump was a kind of apocalyptic scene, with the charred remains of earlier fires, some of them smoldering here and there, with smoke still drifting upward like a battlefield after the battle. The pungent acrid smell of burned belongings filled your nose as soon as you got out of your truck. The metal objects survived, of course, and I remember poking around the singed and charred artifacts with the irrepressible curiosity of a small boy.
An old crawler bulldozer was kept on site, and the piles were regularly pushed around and down a mild slope into a natural ravine and covered with dirt from time to time. The burn dump was a strange place and I can still clearly remember the sights, sounds and smells of that unhallowed ground. By the late 1970s or early 1980s, it had been replaced by the county landfill near Sand Canyon.
The old dump near me was never a burn site, and the items are not blackened, although a grassfire or two has moved through the property over the years. I’ve enjoyed identifying, or at least attempting to identify, the detritus of an earlier time.
For archeologists, archaic middens provide a treasure trove of information about the people who lived in ancient cities: what they ate, who they traded with, what technology they had, etc.
More modern dumpsites like the old one near our farm aren’t needed to know those kinds of things about Americans, that information is all well-documented. But old trash heaps still provide a glimpse into the lives of earlier residents.
In her song “The Lilac and the Apple,” the late Kate Wolf wrote “But now there are cities, the roads have come, and no one lives here today. The only signs of the farms in the hills are the things not carried away: broken dishes, piles of boards, a tin plate, an old leather shoe. . .”
Jon Hammond has written for Tehachapi News for more than 40 years. Send email to tehachapimtnlover@gmail.com.
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