Bakersfield, CA Hotels, Vacations, Tourism

The first town you come to across the rocky peaks north of Los Angeles, looming unappealingly out of a forest of oil derricks, is the flat and featureless BAKERSFIELD . This is the unlikely home of one of the liveliest country music scenes in the nation, stemming from the arrival during the Depression of Midwestern farmers, with their hillbilly instruments and campfire songs. In the mid-Sixties, the gutsy honky-tonk style of Bakersfield artists such as Merle Haggard and Buck Owens challenged the slick commercial output of Nashville, but hopes of luring the major country music record labels to "Nashville … more »