Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Avenal, CA

Avenal is a city in Kings County in California's San Joaquin Valley, about 180 miles north of Los Angeles near Interstate 5.

Avenal's name comes from Spanish soldiers and explorers and derives from 'avena,' the Spanish word for oats, after the wild oat fields that covered the plains.

Avenal was born as an oil boomtown: on October 5, 1928, the Elliot No. 1 well in the nearby Kettleman Hills blew out with a roar heard 20 miles away, and Standard Oil surveyed the Avenal townsite the following year, in 1929.

Avenal boomed fast — by 1936 it had about 3,000 residents and 100 businesses, and by 1940, with over 4,000 people, it was the second-largest town in Kings County and known as the 'Oil Fields Capital.'

Avenal did not incorporate until September 11, 1979, half a century after its oil-boom founding, after citizens voted for cityhood in 1978.

Avenal had a population of 13,696 at the 2020 census, down from 15,505 in 2010 — a decline tied largely to changing inmate counts at its state prison.

Avenal has about 2,802 households, with an average of about 3.66 people per household.

Avenal is home to Avenal State Prison, which received its first inmates in January 1987 and was notable as the first California prison actively solicited by a local community hoping to revive its economy.

Avenal's prison was built after Governor George Deukmejian signed a 1985 law authorizing $117 million for construction; the town had campaigned for it as the oil economy faded.

Avenal styles itself the self-proclaimed 'Pistachio Capital of the World,' celebrating the surrounding nut groves with an annual Pistachio Festival.