Never30

In 1936, Camarillo State Hospital opened at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, between the city of Camarillo and the ocean. It was a project of the Great Depression, designed to put men back to work building public institutions. For 61 years, the hospital served people with mental illness, however that was defined at the time. At one point in the 1950s, it had more than 7,000 patients and nearly 2,000 employees, making it the largest hospital west of Chicago. The hospital officially closed on June 30, 1997, but many buildings had been shut down long before that. Renovations soon began, and today the property is known as California State University, Channel Islands.

In 1959, a trial took place in the old Ventura County Courthouse – now Ventura City Hall – that was described at the time as bizarre, macabre and just plain weird. It drew reporters from around the world, and spectators lined up as early as 5 a.m. to try to get a seat in the courtroom. It was the trial of Elizabeth Duncan, who was accused of hiring two men to kill her daughter-in-law, 8 months pregnant at the time. Her motive? She couldn’t bear the thought of her grown son being married, of losing him to another woman. Ma Duncan herself ended up in the history books. She was the last woman put to death in the California gas chamber in San Quentin.

How will future generations learn about us? In this digital age, will we leave a mark or a clue as to who we were or what we thought? In this episode, we continue our interview with Charles Johnson, who recently retired after 30 years as the director of the research library at the Museum of Ventura County. Once again, we learn how he opened up the past with just one item – in this case, a stereo view card, and don’t worry, he’ll explain what that is. And he’ll tell us about his thoughts and his fears on whether we and future generations can continue to walk through these doors to the past, given the digital age.

"The whole story was just sitting there waiting to be opened — and told." Charles Johnson came across a lot of those stories in his 30 years as director of the research library at the Museum of Ventura County. Recently retired, he sat down for a "Never 30" podcast interview, where he shared stories of the research projects he worked on, where one clue led to another, then another, and history slowly revealed itself.

The two eucalyptus trees that stand atop a hill overlooking Ventura, California, have become a symbol of the city. There have been trees there since 1898 — sometimes two, sometimes five — but they've always stood there as Ventura icons, despite drought, fire and vandalism. Today, one is dead and one is a sapling, but their caretakers are more determined than ever to make sure that two eucalyptus trees remain sentinels of the city.

The Backbone Trail stretches 67 miles through the Santa Monica Mountains, from Point Mugu at its westernmost end to Will Rogers State Historic Park on the outskirts of the second largest city in the United States. Along the way, it yields secrets of its past. The trail itself is a story — more than four decades in the making, finally being completed on the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.

If it weren’t for occasional markers in the grass that list names, birthdates and dates of death, no one would ever know that a stunning park with ocean views in Midtown Ventura, California, was once a cemetery. In 1964, workers removed hundreds of tombstones that filled these seven acres. Some of the graves went back more than 100 years. But the property had become overrun with weeds, and many of the tombstones were broken. So the cleanup began... and so did a never-ending debate. This is Cemetery Memorial Park.

A ghost of a man who looks like he has been hit by a train. The apparition of a woman with the head of a horse and hooves for hands. These are some of the spirits who roam the Oxnard area, according to local writer Richard Senate. And at Rancho Camulos near Piru? Those are happy ghosts there, says another local writer, Evie Ybarra. Join us as we discuss even more spooky tales from beyond the grave. Release date: 10/22/2018

On a tiny plot of land where Etting Road meets Pleasant Valley Road in Oxnard, grave markers stick up from behind a protective wrought iron fence. Some look like traditional gravestones, but most are obelisks. This is the historic Japanese cemetery of Oxnard, where the first burial took place in 1908, the last in 1960. It may be a graveyard, but its story has little to do with death and everything to do with life.

When you take the Ojai exit off the 101 Freeway in Ventura, California, you head back to a time when the oil industry was king. You can still see working oil pumps on the mountainsides, even the remains of an old refinery. But what you won’t see is the community of Foster Park, a small town developed in the 1920s and ‘30s where many oil workers once lived, in the shadow of the actual Foster Park that was established alongside the Ventura River in 1908. The town of Foster Park was demolished when the Ojai Freeway came in during the 1960s, but many still remember it.

The fairs weren’t always held at what is today the Ventura County Fairgrounds. Fair officials say the 1874 celebration coincided with the grand opening of the Ventura Trotting Park, a one-mile racetrack below the bluffs at Pierpont Bay, which is now the Ventura Keys. The next year, agricultural and livestock exhibits were added, and by 1877, the fair began showcasing needlework and other home arts too.

They’ve used getaway horses, getaway cars and getaway skateboards. Exploding dye packs didn’t stop them, and neither have high-resolution video cameras. Why are bank robbers so determined? “Never 30” looks back at some notable heists in Ventura County history.

Today’s Conejo Grade in Southern California, linking Western Ventura County to the Conejo Valley and onward to Los Angeles, is a smooth ride. It is a freeway that carries an average of 132,000 vehicles each day, but taking that route wasn’t always easy. In the early days, horses struggled with its steep pitch and hairpin turns, a harrowing passage for carriages. And for many travelers, the Stagecoach Inn was a welcome sight.

Prisoner of war camps in the United States? Believe it or not, there were dozens of them scattered across the country near the end of World War II. They housed German and Italian POWs who were put to work doing the jobs that American men couldn’t do because they were fighting overseas. In California, that meant picking crops. Some area residents remember these men.

The California Dream was alive and well in 1888. That's when some Chicago investors decided to ship 12 prefabricated houses to Southern California and sell them, sight unseen, to people tired of the East Coast weather. These Colony Houses arrived by train at a small depot known as Saticoy, then horse-drawn wagons hauled them to an undeveloped patch of land dubbed "Simiopolis," which would later become a city known as Simi Valley. Two of those houses are still standing.