Lebec is named in honor of Peter Lebeck or Lebecque , a French trapper killed by a grizzly bear in 1837 in the area that later became Fort Tejon . He was memorialized in an epitaph at the site , found carved in a bare spot on an old oak tree . The epitaph read '' PETER LEBECK / KILLED BY A X BEAR / OCTR 17 / 1837 . '' The bark of the oak tree eventually grew over the carving . A group from Bakersfield , called the Foxtail Rangers , removed the bark in the late 19th century and found the inscription in reverse on its underside . The piece is now displayed in the museum at Fort Tejon State Historic Park . Lieutenant R.S. Williamson camped at the same oak grove in 1853 while on a mid-1850s mapping mission for a practicable railway route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean . Geologist William P. Blake accompanied Williamson 's party . The area was garrisoned by the United States Army a year later , on August 10 , 1854 , as Fort Tejon , the first military fort in the California interior . The fort suffered extensive damage during the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake
1857 Fort Tejon earthquake
1857 Fort Tejon earthquake
Lebec, California