Among the first permanent settlers in what is now Kern County, but then still part of Tulare County, were members of the Brite-Arnold-Dunlap-Glenn oxen-drawn wagon train which reached El Monte early in 1854 after a long and hazardous trip from Texas. The party suffered the rigors of desert travel and encountered hostile Indians on its seven months southern crossing. At the head of the Gila River the group was overtaken by Apaches, and James Houston, brother of Mrs. Dunlap, was shot by the Indians while trying to recover 23 head of stolen horses.

The John M. Brite family pushed northward to become the first settlers in Tehachapi Valley in 1854. Five years later they built an adobe house in a nearby valley, farmed, and ran stock. Brite was elected to the Kern County Board of Supervisors in 1867.

The rest of the 1854 wagon train came north from El Monte that fall. Among those settling in Linn’s Valley and the Glennville area were the John Arnold, John W. Dunlap, James Madison, and "Matt" Glenn families. Upon arriving, the men left their wives, children, and oxen on the bank of Poso Creek to recuperate and hiked over Greenhorn Mountain to the booming mining town of Keyesville to do some prospecting. Three weeks later they were back and Arnold and Dunlap took up farming in Linn’s Valley, and Matt Glenn, a blacksmith, took his family farther north in Tulare County.

A settlement soon sprang up in Linn’s Valley. John C. Reed, brother-in-law of Glenn and a member of the 1854 wagon train, built a store at Laver"s Crossing. David Layers, who came to Linn’s Valley in 1855, built a three-story hotel and a stage barn next to Reed’s store in 1859. William Lynn, who had built a grist mill on Poso Creek in 1854, pushed his Bull Road over Greenhorn to the upper Kern in 1856, but the road was so rough it could only be traveled by oxen and men on horseback or afoot.

When Matt Glenn returned to the area in 1862, John L. McFarlane and associates were undertaking to build the McFarlane Toll Road over Greenhorn. Glenn’s choice of a site at Sulphur Springs for the town he founded was ideal, and with the completion of MeFarlane’s road in 1864, Glennville began to grow. Those who had built hotels and stores at Layers Crossing were soon forced to move their establishments to Glennville where the freight lines made business more profitable.