Cantil (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

for "Stone Cliff") is an

unincorporated community 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 in the

Fremont Valley The Fremont Valley is a valley located in the western Mojave Desert of California. It stretches from the town of Mojave approximately 70 km northeast to the foothills of the Lava Mountains and Summit Range. The valley is home to Koehn Dr ...

of the western

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...

Geography

It is located on

California State Route 14 State Route 14 (SR 14) is a north–south state highway in the U.S. state of California that connects Los Angeles to the northern Mojave Desert. The southern portion of the highway is signed as the Antelope Valley Freeway. Its southern te ...

, between Mojave and Red Rock Canyon. It is at an elevation of , southwest of Saltdale. Its zip code is 93519, and it uses

area codes 442 and 760 Area codes 760 and 442 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the U.S. state of California. These area codes serve an overlay complex that comprises much of the southeastern and southernmost portions of Californ ...

. The Red Rock Elementary School and Red Rock Community Day School are in Cantil. Both help students who were not successful in the regular school system.

History

Cantil was founded as a station on the Nevada and California Railroad in 1908 or 1909 when the line was extended from

Owens Lake Owens Lake is a dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is about south of Lone Pine. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for thousands of years, ...

to Mojave. The name is

for "stone cliff" or "steep rock", and is one of a series of "C" names chosen for this section of the line including Cambio, Cinco, and Ceneda. The first post office opened in 1916. Cantil is near the home of the Honda Proving Center of California (HPCC), a test track used for testing new car models and motorcycles. Honda closed the test facility in April 2010 and put it up for sale; on December 8, 2015, the company announced that they would renovate and expand the HPCC, with some new vehicle test road enhancements and reopen the facility in April 2016. On October 31, 2014, the

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate, which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and opera ...

SpaceShipTwo ''

VSS Enterprise VSS ''Enterprise'' ( tail number: N339SS) was the first SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spaceplane, built by Scaled Composites for Virgin Galactic. As of 2004, it was planned to be the first of five commercial suborbital SS2 spacecraft planned by Virgin Gal ...

'' crashed in the Mojave Desert near Cantil, killing one of the two pilots.

Climate

According to the

Köppen Climate Classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

system, Cantil has a cold desert climates, abbreviated "BWk" on climate maps.Climate Summary for Cantil, California
/ref> Average rainfall is just . The highest temperature ever recorded in Cantil was in 1972. The lowest temperature on record was , recorded in 1963. The average daily high for January is , with average lows of . High temperatures average in July with average lows of .

References

Unincorporated communities in Kern County, California Populated places in the Mojave Desert Populated places established in 1908 1908 establishments in California Unincorporated communities in California {{KernCountyCA-geo-stub