Hi, Hoping to relocate to this area. I have driven through there numerous times and know it is a small town. Anyone who lives there or has lived there in the past? Feel free to pm me if you like.
Can’t offer any advice but I can agree with you that it is a lovely area and seems like it would be a great place to live. The few times I have stopped to eat in the charming little town I have noticed that there are a lot of older people in the restaurants, so I wonder if the town has a lot of retirees.
I am interested to hear what residents have to say about the area.
Years ago - 5 or more - I looked at houses in Bear Valley Springs there.
It is a horse-friendly community with a riding center and access to trails.
Lots of houses with small barns and varying acreages.
HOA gets involvedwith determining what style barn and fencing you can put up, but on the whole it seemed like a nice place to live.
At the time Tehachapi was fairly remote High Desert country, but I’m sure development has changed that.
There’s a poster on here who lives in BVS - sorry cannot recall the name - hopefully they will find this thread.
I live in Tehachapi - in the Sand Canyon area, so am at the east end of the valley. I’ve in Tehachapi for 16 years, moving up from LA (never regretting that move at all) and I work in Bakersfield, an hour commute for me. Well worth it.
There are various areas of Tehachapi. One, which 2Dogs mentioned, is Bear Valley Springs, the premier gated community in Tehachapi. They have a HUGE equestrian base there that run the gamit from Dressage to cow work. They recently put in a covered arena, have another HUGE outdoor arena, a barn to board at if you don’t want to keep your horses at home, lots of good trails. They used to hold endruance and competitive trail rides (NATRC) there, but haven’t for a while as far as I know. I used to work them. It’s a nice community but there is alot of rules/regulations as to what your house, barn, fencing, everything can be and/or look like. That includes all out buildings AND even your dog houses. I looked into moving there when I first was looking in the area, but could not deal with all the rules. Many people can’t either and move out. But, of course, it suits many others. It is a very nice area.
Another is Stallion Springs, which is near BVS (south). It also has a HOA but is not as confining as BVS and it is not a gated community. Where BVS is more mountains, Stallion Springs is on the valley floor. It is also nearer to the prision (California Correctional Institution, Tehachapi).
A little south west in the hills is Alpine Forest. Another HOA community but even less stringent than Stallion Springs. I have a friend who lives there and likes it. It’s a nice area, too, but hard to find a level piece of property there.
Sand Canyon is the poor cousin to all those places, LOL. We are more high desert-y and have NO HOA. There is LOADS of riding right outside my door. I usually ride up the canyon to my trainer’s for lessons - it’s a nice ride and I really enjoy that. We can go up into the hills for days if we wanted to. Tehachapi is very horse friendly; haven’t run into any problems out riding from anyone. And the Pacific Crest Trail is close if you wanted to tackle that!
There are alot of retiree’s there and the town is growing, but it still has a nice homey small town feel to it. We have lots of cultural events and there is quite a bit to do. I’d be happy to answer any questions …
I am looking for a friend who I believe is living in Tehachapi. His name is John Jones the last time I saw John was back in 1976ish. My son Neil was 5 then and is now 48, we stayed with John on our way back to Sydney as Neil wanted to see Disneyland. If anyone who knows of John could you please let him know Joy Caldwell saw him on Pit Bulls & Parolees a TV series, I was so excited to see him that I want to try to locate him to see how he’s doing. You can also if you wish email me, hopefully John may see this and hopefully get in touch. Regards Joy Caldwell;)
I think I have done this message back to front!! Im hopeing it still gets through to John Jones or someone who knows of him… Thanks from Joy :o
I have now been living in Bear Valley Springs for nearly 4 years. Very nice place.
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We are two weeks (hopefully) from moving to Bear Valley Springs. It’s a lovely place, mostly. My neighbors, all horsey, are very nice and friendly. It’s about 7 to 10 miles to town (Tehachapi) for shopping, and about 30–40 miles to Bakersfield for major shopping.
As for the HOA: The committee that decides things is kind of anal on having every structure on a property match in color, and the secretaries (who seem to run the place) try to be helpful, but really aren’t well versed in horsey requirements. For example, I was once told that if you have a corral fence that touches two stalls/run-ins, then you have a shed row barn. OTOH, although there’s no accounting for taste, it’s nice to have a measure of cohesiveness in a neighborhood.
As far as expense goes, I don’t find the property prices to be out of line with other residential areas in California, but there is a yearly fee for amenities, such as use of the country club, horse facilities, trail maintenance, road repair, police department, etc. I think it’s around $1500 now. IMO, not too bad for what you get.
Bear Valley Springs has a very nice swimming pool (outdoor) that can be used year round if you join the aquatics group. They also have a golf course (I don’t golf but people seem to like it). There is a dog park and two small lakes/large ponds. You can swim in one of them but this year we had blue green algae as did much of CA so didn’t work out. You can kayak here too. And the bike riding is also good.
