VENTURA : Calendar to Feature Bits of Local History

Did you know that on Jan. 11, 1949, a freak snowstorm fell on Ventura? Or that 67 drums of liquor drifted ashore from rumrunners in October, 1925, and were seized by the Sheriff’s Department?

These and other historic dates, names, places and facts from the city’s colorful past have made their way onto a new calendar for 1992.

For instance, on June 8, 1846, the San Buenaventura Mission was sold for a mere $12,000.

And in August, 1921, a double murder claimed the lives of the sheriff and a local policeman.

The calendar, published annually by San Buenaventura Heritage Inc., features a black-and-white photograph for each month and more than 30 dates of local significance.

Calendars are $5 and can be purchased at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art.

Proceeds from the calendars will go toward renovation of the Dudley House, a 100-year-old national landmark at the corner of Loma Vista Road and Ashwood Avenue.

Local historian Richard Senate, who did much of the research for the calendar, said the Dudley House will facilitate a better understanding of the decades after the Civil War, a time that “really made this county grow.”

“These people were the ones who built the farms and the orchards,” Senate said of the people who lived in Ventura between 1865 and 1900. “Their story is mostly unknown.”

When the $400,000 restoration project is completed, the house will serve as a turn-of-the-century-era museum for Ventura.

San Buenaventura Heritage President Steve Cummings said the nearly 4,000-square-foot building should be completed in five years.