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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Missouri Triangle (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Missouri Triangle. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the southwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the west. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the south.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the west contained birth and death records; the county to the south contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Missouri Triangle is located in Kern County.

To see how the shape of California's counties may have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Kern County: Inyo, Kings, Los Angeles, Monterey, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare & Ventura.

Below are the counties that are near Missouri Triangle. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Missouri Triangle:

  • Kern County     (The home county of Missouri Triangle)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Missouri Triangle, with the one closest to Missouri Triangle listed first.
    • Spicer City
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the northeast)
      • Spicer City is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Spicer City
    • Reward ‑ Historic
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the south)
      • Reward is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Reward
    • McKittrick
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
    • Buttonwillow
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
    • Lost Hills
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the north)
    • Derby Acres
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
      • Derby Acres is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Derby Acres
    • Semitropic
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the northeast)
      • Semitropic is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Semitropic
    • Fellows
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southeast)
    • Midoil
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the southeast)
      • Midoil is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Midoil
    • Tupman
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the southeast)
    • Dustin Acres
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southeast)
      • Dustin Acres is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Dustin Acres
    • Valley Acres
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southeast)
      • Valley Acres is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Valley Acres
  • San Luis Obispo County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Missouri Triangle, with the one closest to Missouri Triangle listed first.
    • Simmler
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the west)
      • Simmler is located in San Luis Obispo County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Simmler
    • La Panza ‑ Historic
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)
      • La Panza is located in San Luis Obispo County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for La Panza

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Missouri Triangle, see our County-by-County Page for Missouri Triangle.

Cemeteries Near Missouri Triangle ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Missouri Triangle.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

Although we don't have the information ourselves, if you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our list of websites on our Genealogy Helper Page for Missouri Triangle - one of the links might be able to help.

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Missouri Triangle covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Missouri Triangle, with the one closest to Missouri Triangle listed first.

  • Chinaman Gravesite
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southeast)
  • Wasco Memorial Park
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the northeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Wasco Memorial Park
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Wasco Memorial Park is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the west of Wasco.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #1238237 <3>
  • Midway Cemetery
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the southeast)
  • West Side District Cemetery
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the southeast)
  • Shafter Memorial Park
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the east)

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<4>

While we didn't find Missouri Triangle in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Missouri Triangle.

These communities are listed based on their distance from Missouri Triangle, with the one closest to Missouri Triangle listed first.

  • Simmler
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the west)
    • Simmler is located in San Luis Obispo County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Simmler
  • Warren ‑ Historic
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southeast)
    • Warren is located in Kern County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Warren
  • La Panza ‑ Historic
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)
    • La Panza is located in San Luis Obispo County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for La Panza

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Missouri Triangle. See our List of 1890's Communities around Missouri Triangle.

Newspapers Published in Missouri Triangle ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 40 newspapers that have been published in the area around Missouri Triangle.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Missouri Triangle, there are papers which were published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<2>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Missouri Triangle.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These helpful websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Missouri Triangle:

Footnotes ...

<1>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<2>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Missouri Triangle) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<3>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<4>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Missouri Triangle, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.