// Workers AI · dad joke modeAre Basque Americans in California sheepish? They're flocking there.
The presence of Basques in California dates back four centuries. Basque explorers arrived in what is now California in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.[1]
There is a significant presence of Basque-Americans in the Bakersfield area. Many of Bakersfield's oldest and most historic restaurants are Basque,[2] including Woolgrowers, Pyrenees, Benji's, and Narducci's. Noriega Hotel was another notable Basque restaurant that closed in 2020. Memorial Day weekend features the Kern County Basque Festival, sponsored by the Kern County Basque Club.[3] This three-day festival features food, music, dance, and handball (pelota) games.
San Francisco is also home to many Basque-Americans, with a Basque hotel being built as early as the 1860s. The City also had a "Basquetown" located between Chinatown and Little Italy. Basque restaurants were plentiful through the twentieth century, but waned by 1996 when just one restaurant, Des Alpes, remained. The late 1990s brought a resurgence to Basque cuisine in San Francisco, where new restaurants offered cultural cuisine including pintxos, croquettes, and txakoli.[4]
Basque Americans in California include Silicon Valley businessman John Arrillaga and U.S. representative and former California lieutenant governor John Garamendi.[5][6] Explorer Juan Bautista de Anza was of Basque heritage.
References
[edit]- ↑ "BASQUES IN EARLY CALIFORNIA AND KERN COUNTY" (PDF). Kern County Historical Society. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-05-22. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
- ↑ "Bakersfield Basque Symposium". John M. Ysursa. May 31, 2006. Retrieved October 6, 2013.
- ↑ "Kern County Basque Club". KCBasqueClub.com. March 20, 1944. Archived from the original on February 28, 2009. Retrieved October 6, 2013.
- ↑ Echeverria, Danielle (2024-01-03). "This region's food once flourished in S.F. Then it disappeared". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2026-07-05.
- ↑ "The secretive billionaire who built Silicon Valley". Fortune. Archived from the original on 2018-10-03. Retrieved 2026-07-05.
- ↑ Times, Los Angeles. "California congressman brings his Basque roots to Capitol Hill". latimes.com. Archived from the original on 2016-07-04. Retrieved 2026-07-05.
External links
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