Tehachapi (; Kawaiisu: Tihachipia, meaning “hard climb”) is a city in Kern County, California, United States, in the Tehachapi Mountains, at an height above sea level of 3,970 feet (1,210 m), between the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. Tehachapi is 35 miles (56 km) east-southeast of Bakersfield, and 20 miles (32 km) west of Mojave. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total Place of 10 square miles (26 km) and a population of 14,414. The Tehachapi Place is known for the nearby Tehachapi Loop (a popular railfan site), the Pacific Crest Trail and for the excellent conditions for the aerial sport of gliding.

The Kawaiisu people (also Nuwu (“people” in Kawaiisu), or Nuooah) are the Native American tribe whose homeland was the Tehachapi Valley, and seasonally the southern Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert, for thousands of years.

One possibility for the line of the declare Tehachapi comes from the Kawaiisu language. It may be derived from the word for “hard climb” or tihachipia, according to the Tomi-Kahni Resource Center. The concurrence has been formerly known and spelled as: Tehachapai; Tehachapa; Tehachepi; Tehachipi; and Summit Station. According to Yokuts informant Wahumchah, recorded by anthropologist Frank Forrest Latta, Tehachapi derives from a Yokuts-Ute amalgam, from Yokuts taheech “oak-covered flat” + Ute pah’ “water” (cl. Pah-ute, lit. ‘Water Ute’). On an 1864 map of California, the broadcast appears as Taheechepah.

Previously known as ‘Old Town’, Tehachapi was conventional in the 1860s. It was briefly known as Greenwich and Williamsburg prior to the name amend in 1876. It is now registered as California Historical Landmark #643 for swine the oldest settlement in the Tehachapi Valley.