Bena (formerly Pampa) is an

unincorporated area An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Kern County Kern County is a county (United States), county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield, California, Bakersfield. Kern County compris ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. It is located on the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad is a Railroad classes, Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United Stat ...

west-northwest of Caliente, at an elevation of . The Pampa post office operated from 1889 to 1890 and again during 1901.

Railroad history

The Bena railroad station was built in 1885. In 1918, Standard Construction agreed to build four rail operators' houses near Bena for

Southern Pacific The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the names ...

. In 1962, the old Bena railroad station became the site of the largest

superphosphate Superphosphate is a chemical fertiliser first synthesised in the 1840s by reacting bones with sulfuric acid. The process was subsequently improved by reacting phosphate coprolites with sulfuric acid. Subsequently, other phosphate-rich deposits suc ...

manufacturing plant west of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Ita ...

. The Southern Pacific and Santa Fe Railroads donated the old Bena depot, once located a few miles from the

Tehachapi Loop The Tehachapi Loop is a spiral, or helix, on the Union Pacific Railroad Mojave Subdivision through Tehachapi Pass, of the Tehachapi Mountains in Kern County, south-central California. The line connects Bakersfield and the San Joaquin Valley ...

, to Kern Pioneer Village in 1961. Bena Depot was fully restored by the Kern County Museum in 2020.

Oil fields and landfill

The area near Bena was the site of wildcat drilling for oil in the 1930s and 1940s. Kern County now operates a landfill at Bena.

References

Unincorporated communities in Kern County, California Unincorporated communities in California {{KernCountyCA-geo-stub