Dustin Acres, CA

Dustin Acres is a Kern County census-designated place about 6.5 miles north-northeast of Taft, at 384 feet in the west-side oil and farm country. The 2020 census counted 677 residents. The CDP covers 3.68 square miles of land, with local roads tying homes to Taft, the nearest incorporated center. Taft-area work, schools, shopping, and health care form the practical network, while oil fields, farm ground, and open space shape the landscape.

Kern County's Valley Acres/Dustin Acres rural-community plans treated the area as a mix of residential, agriculture, oil drilling, commercial, and industrial land. That mix still gives Dustin Acres its local character: a small residential pocket with the west side's oil and agriculture close at hand. Taft is the place for city offices and larger errands, while Dustin Acres remains an unincorporated community on the edge of the working valley. Its story is less about a downtown than about the way homes, wells, fields, and county roads sit together around a larger oil-and-farm town.