The first white settlers in the area were George Ely and William Linn, who arrived together in 1854. Ely died in 1859 and Linn left the area around the same time. Linn's Valley post office opened in 1860 and the town changed its name to Glennville in 1872. The name honors James Madison Glenn, a blacksmith who settled the area in 1857 and opened the town's first hotel. Glennville became the last stop on the stage coach line from Visalia and the trading center for the surrounding valley after the decline of Lavers' Crossing. In 1860, a state-funded wagon road from Glennville to Kernville was laid out by Thomas Baker, a civil engineer and founder of Bakersfield. A tribute to his ingenuity is that today's State Route 155 still follows Baker's route, originally known as the McFarlane Road, almost entirely. Glennville remains a quiet country town with one restaurant and no gas station. The southernmost grove of Giant Sequoia trees, Deer Creek Grove, is located about ten miles northeast of Glennville. The Glennville Adobe, built before the Civil War, still stands along Route 155 next to the fire station and is the oldest building in Kern County. The oldest standing church in the county, dating to 1866, stands nearby.
Climate
Glennville has a typically Californian Mediterranean climate. Summers are hot during the day, with 51.5 afternoons during an average year topping, but mornings remains pleasantly cool and dry. Winter days are comfortable with January's maximum averaging, but mornings are cold and 117.6 mornings fall to or below freezing each year, although no morning has ever fallen to – the coldest temperature recorded since records began occurring on February 6, 1989 when the mercury fell to. Precipitation is heavily concentrated in the winter and averages around or about three times that of Bakersfield on the valley floor. The wettest month has been December 2010 with, whilst the wettest “rain year” has been from July 1997 to June 1998 with and the driest from July 1958 to June 1959 when only fell. The wettest single day has been September 30, 1976 with ; the only other day to top being December 6, 1966 with. Snowfall averages ; the most in a month is in January 1982 and the most in a season between July 1998 and June 1999.
