An old bridge has risen from the dust, and the foundations of the schoolhouse and church are peeking up from the dry lakebed. The ghost town of Old Kernville -- emptied and flooded by the U.S. government more than 50 years ago -- has reemerged, uncovered by a drought-shrunken lake.
Despite last week's rain, the receding waters of Lake Isabella reveal more remains of the town known as Whiskey Flat in gold mining days and immortalized by writer Bret Harte, who may have used the mining town as the setting for a short story, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat."
In the 1940s, the government claimed the town and land to build a dam and reservoir. Townsfolk moved a few buildings and homes to higher ground, and what they couldn't move -- including the schoolhouse, general store, jail and the 1898 Methodist church -- they dynamited. Their foundations and ruins are visible in the bed of the largest artificial lake in Southern California, about 50 miles northeast of Bakersfield.
The drought that has gripped the West for six years has drained so much water from Lake Isabella that it is at about 16% of capacity, down from 580,000 acre-feet to 95,000 acre-feet. A bathtub-like ring stains the newly revealed canyon hillsides along a shoreline of more than 36 miles.
It isn't Atlantis, but since the 1860 town has resurfaced, the Kern River Valley Museum has been booming. Local historians sift through the lake bottom for clues to the past, and tourists shoot pictures of old streets and foundations that may one day be submerged again.
There were glory days for Kernville, years of Wild West shootouts and, later, the celluloid type on Movie Street. The setting served as an Old West movie set and as a backdrop for such films as 1939's "Stagecoach," starring John Wayne.
But it was also the site of a little-known Indian massacre, where in 1863 the U.S. cavalry slaughtered 35 Tubatulabal and Kawaiisu Indians.
Harvey Malone, 78, a former mayor, retired Southern California Edison Co. engineer and fifth-generation resident whose great-great-grandmother's first husband was killed in the massacre, pointed to concrete steps leading to the ruins of the town's third schoolhouse.
"It was built in 1938 and was the first school in the Kern River Valley to have indoor plumbing," he said.
At first, the Gold Rush of 1849 appeared to have bypassed this part of the valley in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Not a town, stagecoach stop or ranch was noted on an area map until gold was discovered half a mile from town in 1860 by Lovely Rogers.
