City On The Mohawk River

Mohawk Street extension opens to traffic

The highly anticipated Mohawk Street extension opened Thursday to great fanfare as Bakersfield residents got a new avenue across the Kern River.

The project, completed nine months ahead of schedule, offers another connection between Rosedale Highway and Truxtun Avenue. Several subsequent phases are expected to culminate in a new east-west freeway extending from Truxtun Avenue to Heath Road.

The Mohawk extension cost $29 million, with Phases II and III of the Westside Parkway expected to cost $26 million and $87 million, respectively. The Thomas Roads Improvement Program, a cooperative effort between the city of Bakersfield, Caltrans, county of Kern and the Kern Council of Governments funded with federal money, provided much of the capital.

The speed limit for the Mohawk extension will be 65 miles per hour until Public Works traffic engineers conduct a survey and recommend a new speed limit to the Bakersfield City Council. Engineers will begin surveying vehicle speeds on the extension Friday.

“This is a great thing for Bakersfield and the people of Bakersfield,” Mayor Harvey Hall said at the extension’s opening.

City Manager Alan Tandy said he hopes the third phase of the Westside Parkway will be completed by December 2012, and that by then Bakersfield will have an open freeway from Mohawk to Allen Road.

He also mentioned that all of the concrete, rebar and electrical work for the project was locally provided.

Junaid Akhtar, a TRIP engineer who worked on the project, said most of it went off without a hitch.

“It turned out to be a good design,” he said. “The biggest difficulty was the railroad crossing. We initially wanted to pass under the railway, but utilities and restrictions made that unviable.”

The engineering team eventually decided to pass over the tracks.

Former Bakersfield GOP Congressman Bill Thomas, who was instrumental in securing funds for the project, said this opening marks a new direction for TRIP. He noted this was TRIP’s first project in which a new road was created.

Instead of the TRIP acronym, Thomas suggested the organization be called TRICP (pronounced “tricep”), or the Thomas Roads Improvement and Construction Program.

“It’s a fundamental shift,” Thomas said of the new construction’s impact on the program.

Leo Calcagno, manager of Cactus Valley Mexican Restaurant on Rosedale Highway, said he would have to see what impact the Mohawk extension will have on his business.

Maddie's Ancestor Search: Mohawk Village Map

Chart Map showing location of the chief Mohawk Indian towns on or near the Mohawk River from the time of their migration from Canada and Vermont to the Valley about 1580, until the few remaining Mohawks were removed by Col. Van Schaick in 1779. The Dutch settlements and forts of Albany, Waterford, Niskayuna. and Schenectady settled prior to 1700 are here shown. Up until 1666, the dates here shown are all estimates; after that they are matters of historical record. This map was drawn by Nelson L. Greene, a prolific author of the early 20th century.  He was descended on his father's side from the early Palatine settler, Johan Jost Herkimer, and from Captain George Herkimer, who married Alida Schuyler.  In 1777, Capt. Herkimer inherited the home of his brother, General Nicholas Herkimer. It is through Alida that Nelson Greene claimed descent from Philip Pietersen Schuyler, who settled in Fort Orange (Albany) shortly after 1650. Noted historian Paul Keesler states in his article "The Much Maligned Mr. Greene," some information in the Greene book has been superseded by later research or was provided incorrectly by local sources.  Keesler says, "While researching this book on the Mohawk Valley, I read similar criticism of Greene's work by historians, archaeologists and other authors, so I felt justified in my earlier criticism ["poorly researched" on the basis of reading one article written by Greene]. However, when I read every word of the first two volumes of The Mohawk Valley - Gateway to the West , my appreciation of Greene's work increased dramatically. "Considering the astounding amount of information he gathered and published in 1925 when communications, travel and publishing technologies were relatively primitive, its amazing how few errors there are in his books. In areas he lacked expertise, such as archaeology and geographical locations in remote areas of the Valley, he relied on local "experts" for information. More often than not, it was these experts that provided the information that future scholars discovered were not accurate. "In some cases, the information Greene provided was the best available at the time. Since 1925, there have been numerous discoveries that shed new light on the history of the Mohawk Valley. Cases in point are the locations and occupancies of the Mohawk villages prior to 1640.

New York supplement

Journal of the Common Council of the City of Schenectady

Hesperos, or, Travels in the West

Laws of the State of New York

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