McFarland, CA

McFarland is a Kern County city in the San Joaquin Valley, south of Delano. It grew from early 20th-century land development connected to James Boyd McFarland, an educator from Ohio who came west and became involved in real estate. Today McFarland is a farming and working-class community surrounded by fields, dairies, and Highway 99 traffic. The city is widely associated with distance running through the McFarland High School cross-country story, but its everyday identity is still rooted in Central Valley agriculture and family life.