11 Best Sights in The Central Valley, California

Expect no heavy reds at this boutique operation specializing in Rhône-style whites. Owner-winemaker Susan Tipton, who sourced her grapes' vines from Château de Beaucastel in France's Châteauneuf du Pape appellation, produces Viognier, Roussanne, and Grenache Blanc but also spotlights lower-profile varietals like Bourboulenc and Clairette Blanche. (There's also a Grenache rosé.) Tastings, by appointment only, take place in a 100-year-old barn or just outside it, in either case with vineyard views.

This operation 11 miles east of downtown comes highly recommended for its excellent Spanish varietals and warm hospitality. The Albariño white and Tempranillo and Graciano reds often receive favorable critical notice, but everything is well made, including the non-Spanish Petit Verdot and old-vine Carignane. Bokisch welcomes picnickers; pick up fixings in town, and enjoy vineyard views while you dine.

At this combination zoo, botanical garden, and natural history museum, the emphasis is on the zoo. Within the reptile house lives every species of rattlesnake found in California. The landscaped grounds—about a 20-minute drive northeast of Bakersfield—also shelter captive bald eagles, tortoises, coyotes, black bears, and foxes. Additions in 2015 include a touch tank and jellyfish exhibit, a zip line, and a high ropes challenge course.

You can stroll among dozens of restored military aircraft at this outdoor facility. The vintage war birds include the B-25 Mitchell medium-range bomber—best known for the Jimmy Doolittle raid on Tokyo after the attack on Pearl Harbor—and the speedy SR-71 Blackbird, used for reconnaissance over Vietnam and Libya. A recently arrived star is an aircraft that from 1974 to 2006 was known as Air Force One whenever it transported the U.S president.

It's worth the slight detour off Highway 99 to learn about and pay homage to the dream of Allen Allensworth and other Black pioneers who, in 1908, founded Allensworth, the only California town settled, governed, and financed by African Americans. At its height, the town prospered as a key railroad transfer point, but after cars and trucks reduced railroad traffic and water was diverted for Central Valley agriculture, the town declined and was eventually deserted. Today, the restored and rebuilt schoolhouse, library, and other structures commemorate Allensworth's heyday, as do festivities that take place each October.

Taste, touch, and feel your way through orange and mandarin groves on a guided tour of this 180-acre working citrus farm. Tours last 60 minutes; tractor-pulled wagon tours are also available, as are more expensive walking tours. Kids and adults love the challenge of navigating the nation's only orange-grove maze, answering questions at a series of checkpoints to earn a prize at the end. You must book tours in advance online.

Sicilian immigrant Baldassare Forestiere spent four decades (1906–46) carving out an odd, subterranean realm of rooms, tunnels, grottoes, alcoves, and arched passageways that once extended for more than 10 acres between Highway 99 and busy, mall-pocked Shaw Avenue. Though not an engineer, Forestiere called on his memories of the ancient Roman structures he saw as a youth and on techniques he learned digging subways in New York and Boston. Only a fraction of his prodigious output is on view, but you can tour his underground living quarters, including bedrooms (one with a fireplace), the kitchen, living room, and bath, as well as a fishpond and auto tunnel. Skylights allow exotic full-grown fruit trees to flourish more than 20 feet belowground.

This 16-acre site is one of the Central Valley's top museum complexes. The indoor-outdoor Kern County Museum is an open-air, walk-through historic village with more than 55 restored or re-created buildings dating from the 1860s to the 1940s. "Black Gold: The Oil Experience," a permanent exhibit, shows how oil is created, discovered, extracted, and transformed for various uses. The Lori Brock Children's Discovery Center, for ages eight and younger, has hands-on displays and an indoor playground.

A cadre of sweet, well-informed volunteers runs this jam-packed throwback of a museum that's bigger than it looks from the outside. With exhibits about Lake Isabella, minerals and gems, old tools and farming implements, pioneer and native life, and Hollywood Westerns shot in the area, you’ll likely find something to intrigue you.

David Lucas was one of the first local producers to start making serious wine, and today the Zinfandels he and his wife, Heather Pyle-Lucas, make are among Lodi's most sought-after vintages. The Lucases, who previously worked at the Robert Mondavi Winery (she also made wine at Opus One), also craft a Chardonnay with subtle oak flavors and a Zinfandel rosé. Tastings, by appointment, often take place on a patio with a vineyard view.

With its translucent polycarbonate panels, concrete floor, and metal framing, this winery's high-ceilinged tasting room strikes an iconoclastic, industrial-sleek pose in rural Lodi. The Soucie Vineyard old-vine Zinfandel and the Trio and Duality red blends are three to seek out, but all the wines here are good.