Things to Do in Kern County: A Highlights Guide

For things to do in Kern County, there isn’t one signature attraction so much as three separate collections of them, split cleanly across the valley, the mountains, and the desert. A first-time visitor’s best move is usually to pick one region per trip rather than try to see all three at once: here’s what each has to offer.

Valley: Bakersfield and around

For things to do in Kern County indoors, Bakersfield is the county seat and largest city, and most of the county’s indoor attractions cluster here. The Kern County Museum, a 16-acre outdoor history park with more than 50 relocated historic buildings, covers the region’s agricultural, oil-boom, and railroad history in one stop. Nearby, the Buena Vista Museum of Natural History focuses on fossils pulled from the same oil-bearing foothills that built the local economy, and CALM (California Living Museum) is a native-species zoo and wildlife rehabilitation center rather than a traditional museum. Downtown, the restored 1930 Fox Theater still operates as a working arts venue. Bakersfield is also where the “Bakersfield Sound” (the honky-tonk country music built by Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and others) actually took shape; see our music history guide for the full story. West of Bakersfield, the small city of Taft sits at the edge of the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, California’s largest oilfield, and the volunteer-run West Kern Oil Museum there preserves a surviving 1917 wooden derrick; our oil museum and Taft history guide has the full story. For a lower-key outdoor stop, Panorama Vista Preserve and the Kern River Parkway trail system sit right along the river within city limits. Our museums guide covers hours and addresses for all of these.

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Mountains: Lake Isabella and the Kern River Valley

About 40 minutes to an hour northeast of Bakersfield, the Kern River corridor climbs into the southern Sierra Nevada. Lake Isabella and the town of Kernville are the hub for the county’s biggest outdoor draw: whitewater rafting on the Kern River, run by several outfitters based in Kernville, alongside trout fishing and lake recreation like boating and windsurfing. Beyond the lake, Sequoia National Forest offers hiking ranging from easy river-corridor trails to the flat, interpretive Trail of 100 Giants among old-growth sequoias. Our Kern River recreation guide and hiking guide go into both in more depth.

Desert: Red Rock Canyon and the Mojave

East of the Tehachapi Mountains, the landscape shifts entirely. Red Rock Canyon State Park, about 80 miles from Bakersfield, is known for its layered red sandstone and volcanic rock formations: a filming location since the 1930s and, today, one of the darker night-sky spots within reach of Southern California. On the way there, Tehachapi itself is worth a stop for its wind-turbine-lined ridgelines and the still-active Tehachapi Loop, a railroad spiral with a public viewing platform for watching freight trains navigate it. Further into the desert, the small, still-inhabited mining town of Randsburg and its Rand Desert Museum offer a genuine, if modest, gold-rush-era stop, best timed for a weekend when its shops and museum are actually open.

Things to do in Kern County: choosing where to start

Because things to do in Kern County split so cleanly by geography, the practical question isn’t “what should I see” so much as “which region fits this trip”: a valley day around Bakersfield’s museums and music history, a mountain day centered on the Kern River, or a desert day built around Red Rock Canyon and Tehachapi. Our visitor’s guide walks through how to think about the county’s geography and climate before picking a direction, and our day trips guide lays out specific routes from Bakersfield to each region.