The late Bob Powers made no pretensions about being a great writer. But as a fifth generation descendent of some of the hardiest pioneers of the Kern River Valley he knew its history needed to be written, or an important part of California history would be forever lost. In the late 1960’s his desire to see it done led him to make introductions around the Kern River Valley for a writer who, in exchange for a fee, would write a history of the area and its people. After the “writer” disappeared with everyone’s money, Bob Powers decided to do it himself.
Bob Leroy Powers, son of Marvin & Isabel, came into the world in Old Kernville on June 7, 1924. He grew up living and working near the land first homesteaded in 1861 by his great grandparents, Thomas & Sophia Smith, on the heels of the Kern River Gold Rush of 1855. As a young man Powers continued ranching and cowboying and in 1951 he wooed and wed a Kern Valley girl named Margie Martin and they started raising a family and running the family ranch.
In the late 1950’s he joined the U.S. Forest Service and his territory was the same region of the Southern Sierras where he and his father and his father before him had always worked and lived. It was during these years with the Forest Service that he began to write his books because, as he said, “…it needed to be done.” The decision to write one book led this cowboy, cattleman, ranger, historian to write a total of nine books, over the course of 30 years, about the land and people he loved so much.
He was deeply committed to the Kern River Valley Historical Society and Museum, serving as its director-curator and donating much of his lifetime collection of photographs and artifacts to the museum. Without his hard work and dedication much of this important history would have been lost forever.
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