Ojai Valley... A great place to visit and even a better place to live!!
 
Ojai has it all. When it comes to a day trip, a weekend stay, a months vacation, or even the ideal place to live, Ojai is blessed. An hour and half north of Los Angeles, and within easy striking distance of the ocean, Ventura and Santa Barbara. Ojai is a gem.

Scenically its beautiful, years ago, when Hollywood's Frank Capra filmed Shangri-La for the movie Lost Horizons, he chose Ojai. Looking at the valley today, its easy to see why.

Its a long East/West valley full of oaks, orange and avocado groves surrounded by mountains that seem to enfold it and give it its small self contained community air. Its Ojai, not on the way to anywhere, not between anywhere, just a haven of quiet peace and civility in a world that's short of both. No advertising bill boards to barrage the senses, no Walmart, no Target, etc

Yet there is a quiet vibrancy that comes through in its famous Tennis Tournament, The Ojai Music Festival where the L.A. Philamonic under world renowned conductors play in a bowl setting that is exquisite. It has its Shakespeare Festival, its Film Festival, and the Indian PowWow just down the road at Lake Casitas. There is always something going on, all pretty big events and yet, in its own Ojai way, all no big deal.

There are bike trails, horse trails, hiking trails through national forest, rocky scrub and waterfalls, and everywhere, anywhere in the valley, there are breathtaking views. There are gourmet restaurants and fresh baked pastry shops, its home to artists and potters and craftsmen, and stores and studios that sell their wares. Theres the Ojai Valley Inn with a golf course to challenge the pros and theres the bucolic county run Soule Park course, where the trick is to get in early. There are public tennis courts of rare quality and there are tennis clubs with gyms and pools. OJAI HAS IT ALL!!

Artifacts found in the Ojai Valley have been dated at 7000 years old, confirming the presence of a people know as Milling Stone Horizon. Certain later evidence suggests the possibility of an even earlier culture going back some 12,000-25,000 years. No explanation as to the disappearance of either has been found. However, from some 3000 years ago up to the late 18th century the area was occupied by the Chumash Indians, a sophisticated people who built boats, wove baskets, fished, hunted, harvested cereals, and practiced rock art. Many Chumash artifacts and relics have been found in the valley and even today people of mixed Chumash heritage still live in the Ojai Valley.

About 1750, the Spanish mission settlers pushed northward into California. Backed by the Spanish government, their aim was to civilize the natives, make Christians of them, and by so doing, strengthen the Spanish hold on California. However well intentioned, within 50 years the Chumash, decimated by disease, loss of land, and the demands and restrictions imposed by the mission settlers, effectively ceased to exist as a separate culture.  In 1832, some ten years after the victory of the Mexican revolutionists, the Mexican government reduced the role of the missions to that of spiritual matters only. They confiscated all Californian land which they then parceled out to men in favored positions. Senor Fernando Tico, who held the top job in the Buenaventura Mission settlement, was granted 17,716.83 acres of the Rancho Ojai in April, 1837. A further 21,500 acres of land in the Ventura River Valley and the Coyote and San Antonio Creeks in the Oak View area were granted to Christogono Ayala and his brother in law Cosme Vanegas.

Sixteen years later, by which time California had been ceded to the United States, Tico sold his land to Henry Storrow Carnes of Santa Barbara. Several transactions later it was acquired by Thomas Scott, the ex-acting assistant of war under President Lincoln, on behalf of a syndicate of oil prospectors who bought up 277,000 acres of land, including the Rancho Ojai. They built crude wagon trails, which opened up the valley. They sank dry well after dry well, lost all their money, and moved out.

Without any definable cause apart from gossip, legend, and scenic beauty, the valley acquired a reputation that its climate, natural hot springs, and serenity, cured incurable diseases. A Ventura businessman, Royes Surdam, decided to cash in on this aspect. Buying up 1000 acres, he drew up a proposed map of the town which he named Nordhoff, and sent both map and letters back to Eastern doctors advertising the recuperative benefits of the valley.

Offering free land to anyone who would build a hotel to accommodate his sickly visitors, the Blumberg Nordhoff Hotel opened in April 1874. It is said visitors were quite surprised when they arrived to find a hotel, a few shanty buildings, and no town.

The next 30 years saw a slow and steady growth as farmers, grape, olive and citrus growers, cattle ranchers, nurserymen and apiarists moved into the Valley. They needed stores, blacksmiths, carpenters, somewhere to live, a school for the kids, and all this took place. Nordhoff, like hundreds of similar western towns was a hot dusty main street with a small collection of stores and houses on the side of the road. Similar, but different.

That hot dusty main street ran through a valley of such scenic beauty that a rich businessman from Toledo, Ohio, Mr. Edward Drummond Libbey, decided to do something about it.

Edward Drummond Libbey was well educated, extensively traveled, a shrewd and wealthy businessman who had both imagination and good taste. First visiting Nordhoff in 1908, he became enamored of its beauty and built himself a home on Foothill Rd. Under his influence and guidance, the basic shape of todays Ojai took place. The arcade, the post office tower, Libbey Park with its public tennis courts, and the Arbolada (where he moved 30,000 tons of rock and planted six railway cars of plants and trees), are attributable to Libbeys foresight and good taste.

Whether or not he influenced the name change from Nordhoff to Ojai is not documented, but in 1916, in the middle of the Arcade construction, with material stacked all about and workmen with picks, saws and hammers, spreading dust, dirt, and general confusion all around, a petition putting forward a name change from Nordhoff to Ojai was dispatched to the powers that be. In March 1917, Nordhoff officially became Ojai. Libbey -tis said- was very pleased, and why not? In 10 short years he transformed Ojai and set it firmly on the road to becoming the gem it is today.