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EVOLUTION OF A CALIFORNIA CITY: VENTURA Gertrude M. Reith Orange State College, Fullerton One of the very few cities in southern California which developed directly from a Spanish mission, Ventura illustrates the functional changes of site as geographic conditions are altered through time. Founded in 1782, the mission church is still active. Adjacent to it, on land once occupied by the mission gardens, is the crowded downtown business district and the administrative center for both city and county. However, the site is restricted by landforms and ocean and there is insufficient room for modern growth. After years of stagnation as an urban center around the original site of the mission, rapid expansion after World War II resulted in the establishment of a new business district several miles to the south and east. This is placing heavy pressure on the old center to survive and it may become a local type of shopping district rather than retain its dominant position in the economic and political life of the city and county. SULPHUR MOUNTAIN CSSI TA S RED To S VENTUtA W ANTICUNE VENTURA **>»» ? i«'""«^ Con«*·SlMl HILLS OXNARD/PLAiN SANTA YNEZ MTS. MAJOR TRANSPORTATION VENTURA AND VICINITY-I96I - Hiin Hiohwoy¡ ¡Ruootd Hilly Upland¦ Mam Hignwaylundor construction) Othtr Roodl(solectod)------- County Boundary Railroad 15 Ventura is located on the Santa Barbara Channel about sixty miles northwest of Los Angeles, between the Ventura and Santa Clara River valleys. It is built on a narrow coastal plain at the natural convergence point where traffic from major inland routes along El Camino Real reaches the Santa Barbara Channel and the main slope of the Transverse Ranges. This site was selected for the Mission San Buenaventura because it controlled the movement of people in this area and because it offered the requisites for a mission: several Indian villages or rancherías to supply converts and labor, irrigable land, a stable water supply, and wood and other construction materials. A Mission Center—1782 For the fifty years of its existence as a dominant temporal and spiritual force, the Mission San Buenaventura was one of the most successful in Alta California and was an almost self-sufficient center from which the mission fathers directed the activities of thousands of Indians. There were many irrigated gardens, orchards, and vineyards on the river flood plain; large fields of wheat and barley on higher terraces east of the mission; and vast herds of cattle, horses, and sheep on the rich pastures of the Oxnard Plain and on the hills. Near the church and under mission control were the residences , mills, shops, and maintenance facilities by which the mission supplied its own needs and created some surplus for trade. The Ranchos—1833 Even before secularization the mission center had begun to decline because of an increasing scarcity of Indians to convert, a falling birth rate, disease, and the poHtical turmoil caused by the shift from Spanish to Mexican control. After secularization in 1833 and division of the mission lands into private holdings, large cattle ranchos became the dominant occupance pattern . The remaining Indians drifted to the ranchos, each rancho headquarters became almost a town in itself, and the settlement around the mission almost disappeared. There was no need for a center from which to direct land use as before, and both economic and governmental authority were exercised from Santa Barbara, about twenty-five miles west along the coast. Through Santa Barbara were shipped most of the hides and tallow produced under the grazing economy. Although trade funneled through Ventura because of its location, there was no attempt to develop service functions. A few rancheros maintained town houses in Ventura but the first attempts to plat a town in 1848 were unsuccessful. Establishment of American political control did not change Ventura's situation as an isolated frontier outpost. Although by 1856 Ventura was described as a village of seventy or eighty houses, it was still not a functional center. The cattle trade to supply the gold rush demand largely passed it by. Herds were moved from the Oxnard Plain up the Santa Clara Valley and over the Tehachapi Mountains rather than along the more difficult routes through the Ventura River Valley or via...

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