Category: History

The Race to Light Ventura

By Library Docent Volunteer Andy Ludlum

It was 3 a.m. on July 5, 1890. On Ventura’s dark Main Street, a team of laborers moved quietly but quickly along the dirt roadway, guided only by the flickering glow of handheld lanterns. They carried long, redwood poles, heavy and unwieldy, laid end to end on wagons or dragged on the ground. Working by lamplight, the crews marked each location, then, sweating, they dug deep holes by hand with shovels and augers into the compacted earth.

Read the Story: Museum of Ventura County

The Lions of Ventura County

by Library Docent Volunteer Andy Ludlum

It was a quiet June morning in 1926 when Joshua Stockton of South Mountain set out along the trail to his ranch. Just beyond a sharp bend, a shadow leaped from the chaparral and a mountain lion blocked his path. For a heart-stopping moment, man and beast stared each other down. The lion lunged, closing to just ten feet, its wild eyes fixed on Stockton. Most would have run but Stockton held his ground, slowly moving forward, refusing to give an inch.

Read the story: Museum of Ventura County

Chasing Marion: Ventura County’s Notorious Burglar

by Library Docent Volunteer Andy Ludlum

Juan Marion stood in the dark ocean, water up to his neck. The cold January waves made him gasp. The shock numbed the pain from the bullet that grazed his side and the handcuffs that cut into his wrists. He stayed still, watching as sheriff’s deputies swept the Santa Clara riverbed and the ocean with their flashlights, looking for him.

Read the story: Museum of Ventura County

San Buenaventura’s Freedom’s Defenders

by Library Docent Volunteer Andy Ludlum

Walter Chaffee spent several nights cradling a loaded shotgun, guarding the American flag that flew on a liberty pole in front of his dry goods store at the corner of Palm and Main in San Buenaventura. During the Civil War, Chaffee had proudly kept the U.S. flag flying day and night, but vandals who didn’t support the Union kept stealing it. News of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, took days to reach the small mission town. Chaffee’s flag was said to be the only one south of San Jose flown at half-staff to honor the fallen president.

Read the story: Museum of Ventura County

Ventura’s Brush with the Tail of the Comet (Via the Museum of Ventura County

by Library Docent Volunteer Andy Ludlum

Even after 76 years, John Doughty’s memories as an 8-year-old in 1910 were as clear as if it were yesterday. The Simi Valley man said his mother, Annie, began crying and yelling when she first spotted Halley’s Comet. She fell to her knees and waved her arms up and down in prayer. She was certain the comet was a sign from God, “a cyclone that would burn a hole through the Earth.”

Read the story: Museum of Ventura County

The Picture -(via the Museum of Ventura County)

by Library Docent Volunteer Andy Ludlum

At first glance, the picture is nothing special. It’s a group of 31 men, posed in front of the Ventura Mill & Lumber Company. They are all dressed in their best clothing, suits and hats, most wearing ties. What makes the picture historic is that it was taken on Easter Sunday, the morning of April 8, 1917, two days after the United States had declared war on Germany. The young Ventura men had all volunteered to serve their country as members of a state naval militia. Newspaperman, author, and curator of what would become the Museum of Ventura County, E. M. Sheridan wrote that the photograph finally told the “little sleepy mission town” that “there really was a war and their own land was into it.”

Read the story: Museum of Ventura County

“The Woman Lawyer”- (via Museum of Ventura County)

by Library Docent Volunteer Andy Ludlum

On July 28, 1924, when motions were called for in the case of the People vs. Jesse Mendoza in Ventura County Superior Court, court watchers were stunned when “a tall and stately woman” stepped inside the bar and answered, “ready for the defendant.” Mary Belle Spencer of Chicago became the first woman to represent a criminal defendant in Ventura County history. And this was no routine trial. It was the trial of man accused of committing one of the most gruesome and brutal murders anyone could remember. Spencer practiced law for decades and relished the attention she drew in legal circles. But despite her accomplishments and failures, she was invariably described in the newspapers as “the woman lawyer.”

Read the story: Museum of Ventura County

The Bad Bob – (via Museum of Ventura County)

by Library Volunteer Andy Ludlum

Marjery Misner was described in 1924 by The Los Angeles Times as a “pretty, young teacher.”  Near the end of the term, the first-year elementary school teacher in Santa Paula was summoned to the South Grammar School office of the district superintendent, Charles D. Jones.  He said her actions two weeks earlier left him with no choice. She could no longer teach in Santa Paula, and he asked for her resignation. What had Misner done to prompt such an arbitrary reaction from Jones? She defied a school board edict – and bobbed her hair.

Read the story: Museum of Ventura County

Easy Health in a Bottle (via Museum of Ventura County)

by Library Volunteer Andy Ludlum

When a baby was teething and wouldn’t stop crying, there’s a good chance that Ventura County parents in the late 1800s reached for “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup.”

Source: Museum of Ventura County

Disaster in the Devil’s Jaw (via Museum of Ventura County)

by Library Volunteer Andy Ludlum

One hundred years ago a tragic mix of poor judgment, navigational errors, irregular currents, and fog cost 23 sailors their lives.

Source: Museum of Ventura County