6 Best Towns Near Bakersfield For Retirees

Retiring near Bakersfield is mostly a question of how much you want to pay for proximity. The city has hospitals and an airport, but at an average home value of $396,047 it may be priced above what many retirees are working with. The six towns below all sit within that same orbit and most come in cheaper. Ridgecrest brings hospital access. Wasco has roses and transit. Tehachapi trades valley heat for mountain elevation.

Taft

At $205,746, Taft has one of the lowest home values (according to Zillow) in the area. West Side Family Health Care provides medical care in Taft, while Kern County Aging & Adult Services is also available for seniors. Taft Area Transit runs dial-a-ride Monday through Saturday, with discounted senior rates, and operates fully ADA-compliant vehicles.

The West Kern Oil Museum makes an afternoon worth spending: eight acres of outdoor exhibits anchored by a standing 1917 wooden derrick above its original well, open Thursday through Saturday, with free admission. Each October, the museum hosts Boomtown Days, with blacksmithing demonstrations, machinery shows, and food vendors that draw visitors from across the county. The West Side Recreation and Park runs a full recreation center, four-lane bowling alley, weight room, gymnasium, pool, and formal 50+ programming throughout the week. The Fox Theatre offers a “Silver Fox Club” for seniors aged 55+, providing reduced ticket prices for movies.

Shafter

February here looks nothing like the rest of the year. The Colours Festival takes over the town for four days, a color fun run, Ballet Folklorico at the Ford Theater, wine and art exhibitions at Veterans Hall, and all three of the town’s major historical sites open simultaneously with free admission. The Minter Field Air Museum offers WWII tours through an Army Air Field collection that includes original aircraft, uniforms, and the documented history of a base that trained thousands of pilots. The Shafter Depot Museum opens inside the original Southern Pacific Railroad depot on Central Valley Highway, and the Green Hotel, built in 1913 by the Kern County Land Company, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and gives tours by appointment year-round.

The Shafter Senior Center has a busy schedule: SWAT senior fitness, arts and crafts, chair exercise, and potluck karaoke on alternating Fridays. Kern Transit connects Shafter to Bakersfield daily, which allows passengers to transfer at the downtown transit center to a specialized Medical Dial-A-Ride for direct service to the hospital network. At $382,594, home values still sit below Bakersfield’s average.

Ridgecrest

Ridgecrest Regional Hospital offers full-service care, including an ER, outpatient surgery, specialty services, and five new primary care providers added between late 2024 and 2025. That matters in a town two hours from the city. At $269,057, homes run $127,000 below Bakersfield, and a substantial military retiree population at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake has driven demand for senior infrastructure. Senior Services runs case management, homemaker assistance, and Alzheimer’s counseling, funded through the Kern County Department of Aging. The Ridgecrest Senior Center serves a daily lunch. Ridgecrest Transit Dial-A-Ride has been completely free since November 2024, covered by a grant estimated to run for eight years.

Then there is the geography to consider. Ridgecrest sits inside a ring of four mountain ranges: the Sierra Nevada, Coso, Argus, and El Paso. The Maturango Museum, open daily since 1962, runs seasonal guided tours to the Coso Rock Art District on China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, a concentration of prehistoric petroglyphs ranking among the largest in the western hemisphere. Senior admission is $3, excluding the Petroglyph Tours. For a nice dinner out, Ale’s Crab House on North China Lake Boulevard draws consistent crowds for its seafood boils, grilled catfish, and scallops. The Desert Empire Fair arrives each fall and draws the surrounding high desert communities in for the week.

Wasco

This town has been commercially growing roses since the 1920s, and the Wasco Rose Festival every September is the clearest expression of that. The weekend runs a parade down 7th Street to Barker Park, a Rose Queen Pageant, rose field tours led by the year’s Queen candidates, a car show, and live entertainment. The Wasco Historical Society and Museum on 6th Street opens free during the festival and for tours throughout the year. For food, Catrina’s Mexican Grill & Cantina is the standing local recommendation, with large portions. West of town, the Kern National Wildlife Refuge runs a six-mile auto route through restored wetlands, formerly the largest freshwater marsh complex in the western United States, with waterfowl concentrations during fall and winter migration that make it worth the short drive out on a weekday morning.

Medical care is provided through the Omni Family Health clinic in town, with certified counselors who provide free enrollment assistance for Medi-Cal or Covered California. Free interpretation services are also available at all health centers for non-English-speaking patients. The Wasco Senior Center, run by Kern County Aging, serves lunches. For easy access to the city and for residents without a car, Kern Transit Route 110 links Wasco to Bakersfield and McFarland. All these amenities for a Zillow average home value of $317,361.

Tehachapi

At $402,253 (Zillow), Tehachapi runs about even with Bakersfield on home values, and the trade is the climate. The town sits at nearly 4,000 feet in the Tehachapi Mountains and gets four real seasons, including occasional winter snow, in place of the valley’s relentless summer heat. Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley operates a 25-bed critical access hospital on Magellan Drive with 24-hour emergency care and a network of clinics across the area. About 40 minutes from Bakersfield on Highway 58, Tehachapi has long been a quiet draw for retirees from Los Angeles, the Antelope Valley, and the valley floor.

Downtown stops include the BeeKay Theatre and the Tehachapi Heritage League museum, which covers the town’s railroad and pioneer history. The Tehachapi Loop, a famous spiraling section of Southern Pacific track completed in 1876 and still in daily freight use, runs just outside town and draws railroad fans from across the country. For outdoor time, Tehachapi Mountain Park has hiking and picnic areas, and the Apple Festival each October fills downtown for orchard tours and live music. The neighboring communities of Stallion Springs and Bear Valley Springs run their own retirement-leaning developments with golf and equestrian facilities.

Lake Isabella

At $186,377 (Zillow), Lake Isabella offers homes for roughly half what Bakersfield runs, in a mountain setting along the largest reservoir in Southern California. The town sits in the Kern River Valley at about 2,500 feet, where retirees come for the lake, the surrounding Sequoia National Forest, and a slower pace than the valley floor. Kern Valley Healthcare District operates a 27-bed acute care hospital with 24-hour emergency service on Laurel Avenue, plus a skilled nursing facility next door. Bakersfield is about an hour southwest down Highway 178 through the Kern River Canyon.

Boating, fishing, and kayaking anchor most days on Lake Isabella, with public ramps and picnic areas spaced around its shoreline. The Kern River runs through the valley with stretches of class III and IV whitewater for those who still want to be on the water that way. Nelda’s Diner is the long-running local stop for burgers and milkshakes. For day trips, the Kern River Canyon and the routes up to Kernville and Wofford Heights wind through some of the most scenic country in Kern County.

Find Your Fit in Kern County

The towns closest to Bakersfield (Wasco, Shafter, and Tehachapi) keep retirees within easy reach of the city’s hospitals and larger retail. Ridgecrest has the most complete senior support system on this list, including a full-service hospital and a free dial-a-ride program, though it is also the furthest from Bakersfield. Tehachapi and Lake Isabella both offer mountain settings with their own hospitals for those who want to escape the valley climate. A smart move is to visit on a weekday or weekend before committing. The Kern County Aging and Adult Services line at 661-868-1000 can walk you through available programs in any of these towns before you make a decision.