The 1983 23rd Summer Olympics were largely held in Los Angeles. However, several events took place in Ventura County. Lake Casitas hosted canoeing and rowing events, which created many job and volunteer opportunities for Ventura County residents. This collection consists...
Christina Murphy Allison and David N. Allison lived in Santa Barbara after marrying in 1980. She was an accomplished soprano who traveled widely for her performances. He was a well-known tractor collector and scholar. He also authored several articles on...
Andy Anderson is senior vice-president of operations at energy company Aera. Headquartered in Bakersfield, Aera is a major oil and gas producer. Anderson has worked in the energy sector for over 35 years. He has a chemical engineering degree from...
Andy Anderson is senior vice-president of operations at energy company Aera. Headquartered in Bakersfield, Aera is a major oil and gas producer. Anderson has worked in the energy sector for over 35 years. He has a chemical engineering degree from...
Cephas Little Bard, born April 7, 1843 in Pennsylvania, was a well-known physician and prominent citizen of Ventura County in the late 19th century. Bard co-founded Ventura's first hospital and was also a prominent medical researcher. His collection of curios...
The Bard family is one of the most influential families in Ventura County history. The family moved to the area from Pennsylvania by Thomas R. Bard in the 1860s. He was soon followed by his brother, Cephas "Little" Bard, who...
Albert Depue Barnes was Ventura County district attorney from 1934 to 1937. Born in 1906 in California, he began practicing law in 1928. He married Annette Pearle Vehlow in 1933 in Santa Barbara, and they both lived in Ventura County...
The Blanchard family of Santa Paula dates back to when Nathan Weston Blanchard, Sr., arrived in Ventura County in 1872. The Blanchards purchased part of the Saticoy y Santa Paula land grant from E.B. Higgins where they would eventually establish...
Papers and letters dating from 1860s to present between N.W. Blanchard and other family members. Most are between two daughters, Eunice and Sarah, and mother Ann Elizabeth, and are of a personal nature. A few deal with young Nathan's school...
The Camarillo family of Ventura County traces its heritage back to Juan Camarillo, Sr. Born on May 27, 1812 in Mexico City to Luis and Maria Camarillo, Juan came to California with the Hijar-Padres Expedition in 1834. He married Martina...
The collection contains the records for Villa Caliente Enterprises of La Jolla, California. The Business was started in 1968 to celebrate San Diego's 200th anniversary and the California Bicentennial. The business was the proprietorship of Virginia "Chris" Borgen, who handled...
This collection contains photographs, newspaper clippings and historical highlights of Boy Scout activities, ceremonies and events throughout Ventura County. This collection was donated to the museum by Thomas R. Carr, a lifelong Eagle Scout in Ventura County who served under...
The notebook contains records of by-laws, membership, minutes, etc. The scrapbooks contain news clippings and photographs which provide a historical record of the society's activities in Ventura County, from 1954 to 1993....
This collection consists of archival records of the First Congregational Church of San Buenaventura and Santa Clara Valley, the parent organization of Church of the Foothills, formally organized on November 21, 1869, and incorporated according to the laws of the...
The Colonia Oil Company was an Oxnard-based business incorporated in 1909 that held oil interests and land in the Oxnard area and around Piru. While there is sparse information regarding the company's earliest activities, it may have been active and...
Erastus Wright Daily moved to Ventura County with his brothers, Charles J., and Wendell P., in the 1880s. He started out as an employee on Patterson Ranch and eventually owned his own successful farm in Camarillo, cultivating sugar beets, lima...
The Dingman collection consists of photographs, negatives, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera from professional photographer Waldo Henry Dingman, Sr. (1872-1955) and World War I veteran Waldo Henry Dingman, Jr. (1898-1986). Dingman Sr.'s images represent life and culture in Ventura County...
This is an artificial, rapid response collection put together by staff while researching firefighting within the county following the Thomas Fire in 2017. Items include reports, plans, and other publications from the Ventura County Fire Department and other fire departments...
William "Bill" Friend was a former resident of Ojai and later Ventura. Friend was also a local historian. He passed away on April 14, 2011. This collection contains photographs, notes, correspondence, newspaper clippings, newsletters, reports, maps, periodicals, and research compiled...
The Gould family first moved to Ventura in 1887, when Thomas Gould (1851-1934) and Ella Elizabeth Crane Gould (1852-1945) moved their family, Ella's family, and Thomas's brother and his wife to the town. The families moved from Caldwell, New Jersey,...
T. William "Bill" Hale was a local architect and civil engineer. In 1967 he was Thousand Oaks' first director of public works. He owned the Ventura engineering and surveying firm, Robert Martin and Associates, which was sold to Ed Campbell...
David W. Hill, born in 1923 in Blanchard, North Dakota, moved to Ventura in 1932 with him family as a child. After graduating from high school, he joined the Army during World War II. He graduated from Northridge College, and...
A number of documents in the collection refer to H. A. Flint or Flint family members. Henry Flint was an early Ventura County pioneer farmer/rancher in Santa Paula and Saticoy. Upon his death, Flint's property was sold to the Leavens...
The ledgers in this collection were donated to the museum over several years. Many belong to either the Superior Court of Ventura County or various offices and departments within the county's administration, as well as several private businesses or clubs....
The collection pertains to Achille Levy's personal and business life. Levy was a businessman, banker, and community leader in Ventura County. Born in 1853 in Mommenheim, France, he was 18 years old when he immigrated to California. After a two-year...
Madeline Miedema was an Oxnard historian and educator. Born in 1909 in Michigan, her family moved to Oxnard when she was 9 years old. She attended school in Oxnard and received post-secondary education at University of California Berkeley and the...
John Nichols of Santa Paula, California is a local historian, photographer, and writer. Much of his work has focused on the St. Francis Dam disaster and his research on the 1928 dam break led to the 2002 work for Arcadia...
John C. Orr, born in Ventura County, is a fourth-generation lawyer and farmer. His great-grandfather, Orestes Orlando Orr, opened his law practice in downtown Ventura in 1882. In 1910 Orestes' son Harold Frank Orr joined his father's firm. In 1915...
Ventura County historian Charles F. Outland was born in Santa Paula on August 30, 1910. Due to his keen interest in local history, Outland began collecting books and historical materials and later became actively involved in the Ventura County Historical...
The Patterson Ranch Company was a livestock, dairy, and agricultural farm originally located on the Oxnard plains. The ranch was owned by New York farmer John D. Patterson, who hired managers to run the farm for him. Peter Hartveld, a...
The People v. Elizabeth Duncan trial was heard at the Superior Court of California in Ventura County regarding the murder of Olga Duncan by Augustine Baldonado and Luis Estrada Moya at the behest of Olga Duncan's mother-in-law, Elizabeth Ann Duncan....
The People's Lumber Company was a lumber and construction supply company established in Ventura in 1890. The company was the main supplier of lumber and construction supplies until it reoriented its business to focus on real estate investments in the...
This collection pertains to Ventura Counsel No. 99 of the Sociedade Portuguesa Rainha Santa Isabel (S.P.R.S.I.). The society was a non-profit charitable and social sorority whose members are of Portuguese lineage and was active in Ventura County. The collection consists...
The Bard family played an important part in the development of Ventura County, particularly Port Hueneme. The family also established Quimichis Colony in Mexico, which involved acquiring 75,000 acres of land in western Mexico between Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. The...
Los Rancheros Visitadores, or the Visiting Ranchers, is a Santa Barbara-based social club; however, many of its members are also from Ventura County. The club is most known for its annual 60-mile trek through the Santa Ynez Valley. James Albert...
The Reardon family moved from the Midwest around the turn of the century and is well known for establishing a mortuary in Ventura, as well as others in Oxnard and Simi Valley. Oliver Louis Reardon and Mary Agnes O'Leary Reardon...
Herbert F. Ricard was a local historian and writer. He authored MVC quarterly Volume 17, Issue 2 "Place Names of Ventura County" (1972-73). This collection contains Ricard's research and notes, including his notes on place names within the county that...
This collection was donated by the Saticoy Historical Society, which was active between 1991 and 2014. The society collected items, histories, and artefacts related to the history of Saticoy. It includes both their administrative files and the items they collected...
The Southern Pacific Milling Company (SP Milling) was primarily a milling and quarrying company that had operations in several locations throughout California's central coast, with major operations in El Rio and in Ventura. The company was active from around 1886...
The Saint Francis Dam disaster took place in the late night and early morning hours of March 12-13, 1928. The concrete gravity dam collapsed and sent a tide of water through the Santa Clara River Valley and out to the...
Most of the material pertains to the following four individuals: However, Ventura County history is also recorded herein, as it touched and affected these individuals. A catalog of the collection follows this introduction....
The eight large scrapbooks in the collection were given to Mr. Thomas R. Carr several years prior to 1994 when they were found in a warehouse that was being cleaned out by the organization. To these scrapbooks Mr. Carr added...
The Ventura County Star was founded in 1925 by the John P. Scripps Newspaper Group. In approximately 1936, the Star acquired the Ventura Free Press, which was founded in 1875, and began publishing as the Ventura County Star-Free Press in...
Ventura High School is a public secondary school that was established in 1889. It is the oldest high school in Ventura. The school was originally established as a grammar school for Grades 1-8 and was located across from Park Plaza...
The collection consists of four boxes of historical materials covering events in Ventura County, gathered by Mr. James F. Welch during his research from 1973 to 1979....