Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Wasco, CA

Wasco began in 1897 when the Santa Fe Railroad laid tracks through the area, and the 1898 depot stop was named Dewey, later Deweyville, in honor of Admiral George Dewey, a hero of the Spanish-American War.

When Wasco's post office opened in October 1899, residents discovered another California town already used the name Dewey, and the name Wasco, suggested by settler William Bonham after his native Wasco County, Oregon, was recorded in 1900.

The Wasco Colony was founded in 1907 through a Kern County Board of Trade colonization effort that brought some 300 settler families to farmland sold through the Kern County Land Company.

Wasco's voters did not consent to incorporation until December 1945, nearly fifty years after the town's founding.

Wasco bills itself as the 'Rose Capital of the World,' and NASA reports that the fields around Wasco produce about 55 percent of the rose bushes sold in the United States, grown on more than 8,000 acres.

Wasco High School's football rivalry with Shafter High School dates to 1933 and is one of the oldest high school football rivalries in California, paused only during World War II.

The first edition of the Wasco News, the town's newspaper, was published on November 11, 1911.

Wasco had a population of 27,047 at the 2020 census, with about 6,300 households averaging 3.57 people each, about 58 percent of homes owner-occupied, and a median owner-occupied home value of about $273,600.

Farmland around Wasco grows roses alongside grapes, almonds, pistachios, cotton, and carrots in the southern San Joaquin Valley.

Wasco sits in Kern County, one of the top oil-producing regions in the United States, about 25 miles northwest of Bakersfield.