New Old Stuff: Macabre History

One of the stranger SCV stories is the tale of Peter Lebeck, for whom the community of Lebec is named. We suppose he was a French Canadian trapper, but that's just a guess. All we really know is from a carving in the bark of an old oak tree up at Fort Tejon. The inscription says he was killed there in 1837 by a bear. If so, it would make him Kern County's first non-Native American inhab­itant. Was it true? Was it a prank? The story sort of hung out there for 53½ years until an adventurous, outdoorsy group called the Foxtail Rangers took up a suggestion by the landowner - none other than Edward F. Beale of Beale's Cut fame. Beale had the idea that somebody really ought to dig up Mr. Lebeck to see what could be learned. So one summer day in 1890, these Rangers - men, women, children - carefully dug beneath the old oak, and sure enough, four feet down they found something. It was the skeleton of a rather large man, sans hands and feet. Apparently they'd been bitten off in the attack. The group gently reburied him, and there he still rests. Which gives rise to another question: Who was Kern County's second non-Native American resident? Who buried him the first time?

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