City of Oxnard history

In 1860, the Oxnard brothers moved out West and started a beet factory in Chino.

Achille and Henry Levy opened an agricultural brokerage business in 1882, and finally a bank, which encouraged and assisted farmers.

In 1896, local farmers began experimenting with sugar beets in addition to barley and lima beans.

Oxnard Station was established in 1897, opening the door to the rapid growth of the Downtown and surrounding neighborhoods.

The Oxnard Improvement Company was created in 1898 to design the town site which was laid out, European style, around a town square (now Plaza Park). The land for the town was purchased from J. G. Hill.

19, 1899, a few months shy of the turn of the century, the sprawling American Sugar Beet Co. factory opened.

The first church was built in 1900, and the Ventura County Railway was built to transport beets from the fields.

Soon, Oxnard’s operation was one of the largest sugar producers in the country, and the factory was the nucleus of what grew into the city of Oxnard--so named on June 30, 1903.

More than 4,000 square miles (10,500 square km) of the desert lie below sea level, including the 300-square-mile (800-square-km) Salton Sea, a lake with no outlet that was created in 1905–07 when the nearby Colorado River broke out of its channel.

On March 23, 1906, night watchman McNaughton was walking through the China Alley area (downtown), and was later found shot to death.

Unable to hire more officers, Marshal Reno resigned in 1907.

On November 27, 1908, the first prisoner in Oxnard's new jail was James R. Mulvany, an ex-convict wanted for horse stealing in Bakersfield.

The first patrol car was purchased in 1916.

The 1917 photo of Oxnard's police force standing at Plaza Park (with the famous Oxnard Plaza Park pagoda in the background) is the earliest known group picture of Oxnard's law enforcers.

In fact, it was in 1921 that Paramount Studios found Oxnard’s sprawling coastline to be the perfect stand-in for the Egyptian desert.

The Oxnard Harbor District was formed in 1938 and built a commercial and yacht harbor.

Oxnard experienced its greatest growth during World War II. The United States Naval Construction Battalion Center was established at the harbor, and the first United States Naval Air Missile Test Center was constructed at Point Mugu in 1946.

Oxnard Air Force Base was established in 1952.

The factory operated for 60 years but closed its doors in 1958 when vegetables had replaced sugar beets as the primary local field crop.

The California State Water Project, launched in 1960, is the largest water-transfer system ever undertaken.

In 1993 the consultant team that had prepared the Plaza Park master plan was retained to refine that form-based code and prepare implementation and economic development recommendations.

Beginning with June 1994, the library began microfilming the Ventura County Star.

That document was the Downtown District Master Plan, completed in draft form in 1996 but not adopted.

In 1998, Oxnard was one of nine libraries chosen from across the state to conduct a photo history project as part of the “Shades of California” program.

The Mullin Automotive Museum was established in 2010 and is a must-visit for all admirers of fancy automobiles.