California
California history reduced to ash with Borel fire's destruction of Havilah
There was gold in these hills.
Hidden in the rugged Sierra Nevada amid sprawling pine forests, Havilah was once a bustling mining town where stamp mills pulverized rock from the region’s mines and prospectors panned for precious metals in the late 19th century.
In its heyday, the town’s main drag featured saloons, dance halls, inns and gambling houses. Townsfolk witnessed midday gunfights, manhunts for wanted murders and stagecoach robberies, and they wagered gold dust on horse races, according to Los Angeles Times archives.
But for nearly a century, long after the feverish search for gold subsided, Havilah had been considered something of a ghost town, with only about 150 residents. Foundations were all that remained of most of its historic buildings when fire swept through the town July 26.
The fast-moving Borel fire, which has scorched nearly 60,000 acres as of Friday, destroyed some of the last vestiges of Havilah in just 24 hours, including a replica courthouse, which served as a small roadside museum for decades.
Roy Fluhart, whose ancestors had homesteaded in the area around the Great Depression, had tried to preserve the town’s rich history. As president of Havilah’s historical society, he and his relatives helped curate the courthouse with historic documents and photographs, antique mining tools and other artifacts from the region’s past.
“We lost everything,” Fluhart said. “The sad part is, the museum was an archive, and it’s lost now. Son of a gun. … We didn’t really have time to get anything out.”
It wasn’t just the town’s history that was lost.
Bo Barnett, whose house was destroyed, managed to escape with his dogs and the clothes on his back. Barnett, whose wife died a month ago, expressed remorse that he didn’t have time to collect her ashes.
“Fire was raining down upon us,” Barnett said, as his eyes welled with tears. “I wasn’t sure what I was driving into. My tires were melting on the road. It was horrible.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who spent much of his childhood in the sparsely populated mining community of Dutch Flat in Placer County, lamented the loss of a fellow gold rush community on Tuesday. Wearing aviator sunglasses and a ball cap, he toured the wreckage in Havilah, walking up to the remnants of the town museum and pulling a novelty Uncle Sam coin bank from the blackened rubble.
“Towns wiped off the map — places, lifestyles, traditions,” Newsom said at a news conference. “That’s what this is really all about. At the end of the day, it’s about people, it’s about history, it’s about memories.”
In recent years, devastating wildfires have obliterated some of California’s gold rush towns, erasing the history of one of the most significant eras in 19th century America. Havilah joins the likes of Paradise and Greenville, small communities that saw influxes of prospectors, followed by population exodus and, more recently, devastation.
Havilah credits its origin to Asbury Harpending — a Kentuckian who plotted to seize California and its gold to support the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 1864, Harpending, indignant after his conviction for high treason, ventured to present-day Kern County’s Clear Creek region. He found deposits of gold and christened the area Havilah, after a gold-rich land in the book of Genesis.
Although Harpending had no land rights, he established a sprawling mining camp and sold parcels to incoming miners in what many believed could be a second gold rush. In 1866, Havilah became the seat of the newly established Kern County, a title it held for eight years until Bakersfield became the principal city. He stayed only two years but made a fortune: $800,000.
“I was literally chased from absolute poverty into the possession of nearly a million dollars,” Harpending wrote in his autobiography. “I discovered a great mining district and founded a thriving town. And if the matter of paternity is ever brought up in court, it will probably be proved to the satisfaction of a jury that I am the father of Kern County.”
As gold became harder to find, people deserted Havilah, and its buildings fell into disrepair. Those who remained attempted to commemorate the community’s mining legacy and pioneer heritage. In 1966, for the centennial of Havilah’s founding, residents finished building the replica courthouse. They later built a replica of the town’s schoolhouse, which doubled as a community center.
Historical markings along Caliente-Bodfish Road indicate buildings that once existed: barbershop, a blacksmith, the Grand Inn and a livery stable. Some large plaques also pay tribute to historic events such as the last stagecoach robbery in Kern County in 1869, in which a gunman made off with $1,700 in coinage and gold bullion.
Wesley Kutzner, a historical society member and Fluhart’s uncle, helped build the replica courthouse alongside his parents and other locals. Although the historical society couldn’t afford fire insurance, Kutzner said he has resolved to clean up the property and rebuild, the same way the community did nearly 60 years ago.
“The plan is to rebuild,” Kutzner said. “It’s going to be a community effort. It’s going to be a tough road home, but we’ll get it done.”
One resident who plans to rebuild is Sean Rains. He left Bakersfield two years ago and moved to Havilah with his girlfriend and their pit bull, seeking the tranquility of the mountains. Rains, a miner and countertop fabricator, had also been one of the few people holding onto hope of finding buried treasure in Havilah.
In his front yard, Rains kept a shaker table and other equipment to sift soil for flecks of gold.
It was “nothing to make us rich,” he said, but he did find some.
“They say it’s everywhere,” Rains said. “It’s just a matter of whether it’s enough to make it worth your while.”
Rains was also recruited into the historical society. He read old letters in which a sheriff had remarked that the town’s only pastimes were robbing stagecoaches and horse racing. Another recalled how pioneers hauled their carriages over the mountainous terrain by rope.
The historical society had recently installed a water hose at the replica schoolhouse. Because Rains lived nearby, he was asked to help defend the schoolhouse if there was ever a fire.
“I gave them my word,” he said.
So once Rains saw fire crest the mountaintop behind his home and swiftly descend into the valley, he rushed next door to start up the schoolhouse’s water pump. He sprayed down the building and extinguished embers under its front porch.
He eventually turned his attention to his own one-story house, dousing it until the trees in his yard caught fire. He, his girlfriend and their dog sped away in his pickup truck.
“It was licking our heels on the way out of here,” Rains recalled. “It was right on top of us. The winds were crazy in that thing, going in all different directions. It was sucking branches right off the trees. The whole mountain was engulfed.”
Rains returned to town the next morning, walking along Caliente-Bodfish Road to see what was left of Havilah.
The valley’s pines and oaks were charred, and much of the landscape was covered in white ash. Rains’ two-bedroom home was burned to its cobblestone foundation. Two cars he had been restoring were scorched husks. His two ATVs were reduced to skeletal frames.
The schoolhouse survived.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
California
Signs of spring blooming at Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve after wet, warm winter
It’s beginning to look a lot like spring!
The warm and wet weather this winter has led to the start of a dazzling super bloom at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve.
“We had an unseasonably warm winter as well, so there’s actually a lot of growth,” said Callista Turney with California State Parks. “We’re having early wildflowers that are already at the park. So if you look at the poppy live cam, it shows a lot of orange already.”
The rain has helped the early blooms, but it’s actually the heat that accelerated the growth of the flowers.
“It will actually speed up the growth of the plants, so some of them were already blooming and that’s going to cause those blossoms to accelerate faster towards seed production. And the blossoms that are in the process of being formed, those are going to open up soon as well.”
We also sometimes see great super blooms in Death Valley National Park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Joshua Tree and the Mojave National Preserve.
“It’s definitely a rare occurrence because we don’t always have the right conditions. It’s gotta be the weather, the wind, the rain, all coming together,” said Katie Tilford, Director of Development and Communications with the Theodore Payne Foundation.
If it continues to stay unseasonably warm, we’ll see a shorter bloom. The key to a longer season is milder weather.
Copyright © 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
California
Republican governor candidate Chad Bianco says he’s the ‘antithesis to California state government’
We are counting down to the California governor’s race. Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, is one of the two biggest names running on the Republican ticket.
In a one-on-one interview with Eyewitness News political reporter Josh Haskell, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said, “I am the antithesis to California state government because I am going to take a nuclear bomb into that building and absolutely destroy everything that they do to us behind closed doors.”
Although he’s been elected by the voters twice, Bianco says he’s not a politician — which is why he believes his campaign for California governor is resonating, as reflected in the polls.
“President Trump, in one year, from 2025 when he took over, until now, did absolutely nothing to harm California. What’s harming California is 30 years of Democrat one-party rule that have created an environment here that no one can live in anymore. They’ve only been successful here in California because we vote D no matter what. You vote D or die. I mean, that’s it. Charles Manson would be elected in California if he was the only Democrat on the ballot,” Bianco said.
Bianco isn’t the only conservative Republican running for governor, and according to polling, he’s neck-and-neck with former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
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“Steve has no chance of winning in November. The Democrats know that I’m going to win in November, and so they have to do everything they can to keep me out of that,” Bianco said.
When asked about the affordability crisis in the state, Bianco said, “Almost the entire issue of affordability in California is because of regulation, excessive regulation imposed by government. Every single regulation can be signed away with the governor’s signature.”
“It is a drug and alcohol addiction problem that, and a mental health problem,” he said about the homelessness crisis. “Every single bit of money that is going to these nonprofits that say ‘homeless,’ zero money. You’re getting absolutely nothing. I can’t tell you that we would end what we see in the homeless situation within a year, but I guarantee you we would never see it again after two years.”
When challenged on that prediction, pointing to how the state doesn’t have the facilities to treat the number of people living on our streets, Bianco responded, “We have been conditioned to believe that buildings take five years to build. It takes 90 days or less to build a house, but in California, it takes three to five years because the government won’t allow it. The regulations that are destroying this state are going to be removed with me as the governor.”
Bianco also said California jails shouldn’t have to play the role of treatment facilities.
Although he says he supports the Trump administration and wants the president’s endorsement, Bianco has been traveling the state — meeting not just with Republicans, but Democrats and independents as well. He says all of our state government officials have failed.
The primary election is June 2.
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Copyright © 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (FOX26) — California’s privacy watchdog has ordered PlayOn Sports to pay a $1.10 million fine and change how it handles consumer data after finding the company’s practices violated state law in ways that affected students and schools in the state.
The California Privacy Protection Agency Board issued the decision following a settlement reached by CalPrivacy’s Enforcement Division.
The decision is the first by the board to address privacy violations involving students and California schools.
Schools across the country use PlayOn Sports’ GoFan platform to sell digital tickets to high school sporting events, theater performances, and homecoming and prom dances, with attendees presenting tickets at the door on their mobile phones.
Schools also use PlayOn Sports’ platforms for other sports-related activities, including attending games, streaming them online, and looking up statistics about teams and players.
In California, about 1,400 schools contract with PlayOn Sports for these services.
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GoFan is also the official ticketing platform for the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports.
According to the board’s decision, PlayOn Sports used tracking technologies to collect personal information and deliver targeted advertisements to ticketholders and others using its services.
The company allegedly required Californians to click “agree” to tracking technologies before they could use their tickets or view PlayOn Sports websites, without providing a sufficient opt-out option.
“Students trying to go to prom or a high school football game shouldn’t have to leave their privacy rights at the door,” said Michael Macko, CalPrivacy’s head of enforcement. “You couldn’t attend these events without showing your ticket, and you couldn’t show your ticket without being tracked for advertising. California’s privacy law does not work that way. Businesses must ensure they offer lawful ways for Californians to opt-out, particularly with captive audiences.”
The decision also describes students as a uniquely vulnerable population and warns that targeted advertising systems can subject students to profiling that can follow them for years, expose them to manipulative or harmful content, and develop sensitive inferences about their lives.
Instead of providing its own opt-out method, PlayOn Sports directed students and other users to opt out through the Network Advertising Initiative and the Digital Advertising Alliance, which the decision said violated the company’s responsibility to provide its own way for consumers to opt out. The company also allegedly failed to recognize opt-out preference signals and did not provide Californians with sufficient notice of its privacy practices.
“We are committed to making it as easy as possible for all Californians — from high school students to older adults, and everyone in between — to make the choice of whether they want to be tracked or not,” said Tom Kemp, CalPrivacy’s executive director. “Californians can opt-out with covered businesses, and they can sign up for the newly launched DROP system to request that data brokers delete their personal information.”
Beyond the $1.10 million fine, the board’s order requires PlayOn Sports to conduct risk assessments, provide disclosures that are easy to read and understand, and implement proper opt-out methods.
The order also requires the company to comply with California’s privacy law prohibiting the selling or sharing of personal information of consumers between 13 and 16 without their affirmative opt-in consent.
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