Spanish explorer Juan Rodgriquez Cabrillo was the first European to explore the coast. He discovered the Channel Islands, Point Mugu lagoon and nearby beaches in 1542. Cabrillo called the countryside Buenaventura, or “good fortune,” and claimed the land for King Charles I of Spain. He was buried on San Miguel Island the next year.

In 1769, at the same time that Padre Junipero Serra founded the first mission in San Diego, explorers and priests accompanying Gaspar de Portola found a populous Chumash village in Ventura.

In 1782, the Mission San Buenaventura was founded as the ninth and last in the string of Serra’s missions along El Camino Real, the coastal route from Los Angeles to San Fransico. The mission, located in today’s city of Ventura, was the half-way point between the San Diego and Monterey missions, and pueblo life and sprawling ranchos began to spring up around the site of the missions. The area remained virtually unsettled until the 1800s when King Phillip of Spain gave 4,871 acres of large land grants to Spanish officers. These land grants and the land on the two missions were later broken up into ranchos and given to prominent Mexican families.

Explorers and Settlers
When California was admitted into the Union in 1850, most of the land that later became Ventura County was divided among just 19 families. In 1822, Capt. Jose de la Guerra y Noriega filed a map as part of a Mexican land grant — El Triunfo Rancho. After California joined the Union, El Triunfo Rancho was recognized as two land grants: Rancho Las Virgenes and Rancho El Conejo. These were the sites of today’s Conejo Valley and communities such as Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills and Westlake Village.

Maria Machado de Reyes built a large adobe home near today’s Westlake Boulevard and Triunfo Canyon Road that welcomed many vaqueros who were driving cattle north to feed the miners in the gold fields. After much of the area was sold to the Howard family in 1875, a guest at the ranch was reported to have shot a huge mountain lion. That guest was a gentleman by the name of Samuel Clemens, better known as the prolific writer Mark Twain. Later, the 12,000-acre ranch, which included Westlake Village, was bought and sold by newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. In 1963, Daniel K. Ludwig, owner of the American Hawaiian Steamship Co., decided to develop it as a “city in the country.”

The city of Camarillo is located on another large land holding — Rancho Calleguas. After settling in Santa Barbara and then San Buenaventura, Don Juan Camarillo accumulated enough money in real estate to buy Rancho Calleguas in 1876 from Don Jose Gabriel Ruiz for $17,754. In the late 1800s the region began to be parceled into ranches, and early pioneers opened a post office, school and stores.

Mining
Although gold was first discovered in Piru Creek in 1841, it wasn’t until the 1860s that the discovery of oil seeping from the ground on an Ojai ranch signaled the beginning of the oil-drilling boom. Thomas Bard, president of Union Oil Co., established the corporate headquarters of the oil giant in Santa Paula.

With the arrival of the railroad in 1887, Ventura County enjoyed steady growth from then on. Eight years after the oil discovery, the county declared its independence by splitting from Santa Barbara County. The county was created from the southern portion of Santa Barbara County after the California Legislature approved the split on Jan. 1, 1873.

Railroad Growth
The building of a Southern Pacific Railroad route from Saugus to Santa Barbara started in 1886 when Bard and other landowners convinced the railroad that sufficient traffic would be generated. While the right-of-way was being secured, Chinese grading crews and Irish track gangs began arriving in Saugus around mid-April 1886. Traffic on the line through the Santa Clara River Valley increased greatly, as it was a part of the main north-south link between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Completion of the 7,369-foot Santa Susana tunnel in 1904 allowed a more direct route from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. The new line headed south to Oxnard, then east through Camarillo and Moorpark and on to the San Fernando Valley. The old route via Fillmore and Santa Paula was soon relegated to branch-line status, with two passenger trains daily remaining on the schedule until mid-1934. The route continued to carry hundreds of carloads of citrus each year into the 1950s. By the 1960s much of the citrus grown in the Santa Clara Valley was being shipped by truck. Although the railroad line east of Piru was abandoned in 1984, it’s been resurrected as part of the Fillmore & Western Railway, which now uses the old tracks for movie and tourist train operations. In fact, the Ventura County Transportation Commission recognizes that this rail route will eventually need to be restored for future mass transit.

Agriculture
Ventura County’s mild climate and rainfall made its land ideal for farming, and during the mid-1800s hundreds of immigrants from the East Coast and Europe came to farm the fertile soil. They raised lemons, oranges, strawberries, celery, avocados, artichokes, apricots, walnuts, sugar beets, all types of beans, barley and other crops. In Oxnard, Henry Oxnard and three brothers built a local factory to process the harvest from the 18,000 acres of sugar beets farmed locally. The Southern Pacific Railroad constructed a spur right to the factory site so the processed beets could be shipped. The factory attracted many Chinese, Japanese and Mexican workers to Oxnard, and the sugar beet industry brought diversification to agriculture.

Navy Presence
The Navy has maintained a presence in Ventura County for more than 100 years. After the Port Hueneme Harbor was completed, the Navy appropriated the harbor to use for the Naval Advanced Base Depot, later the Construction Battalion Depot in 1942. Now, the Port Hueneme Naval Construction Base Center is home to the Naval Surface Warfare Center, the Navy’s premier in-service engineering and logistics center, and the Naval Construction Battalion Center, familiarly known as the “Pacific Seabees.”

The Point Mugu Naval Air Station was founded in 1947 at Point Mugu, eight miles south of Oxnard and six miles southeast of Port Hueneme. The total acreage of the base is 27,090 acres, including 4,490 acres used for the inhabited area, and 22,600 acres for Mugu Lagoon, an important wetlands area.

Entertainment Industry
Since the early 1900s, the entertainment industry has played a prominent role in Ventura County’s economy. Many well-known films have been produced at various historical locations. In 1921, for example, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. starred in and directed the original “Robin Hood” near Westlake Village. The early Tarzan and Buck Rogers movies, Westerns and television shows such as “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman” and “M*A*S*H” were filmed in the Camarillo area.

Feature films such as “Air America” and “The Wild, Wild West” also were produced in the county. Fillmore has been featured in many films, including “How to Make An American Quilt,” “The Fugitive” and “City Slickers II,” and the beautiful Piru Mansion in Piru also has been a popular backdrop for television shows and commercials.