Mary Howard Smith; Rancher
Mary Howard Smith, a longtime rancher in Ventura County, died Tuesday morning after a short illness. She was 94.
Smith was born in Arizona in 1898 and moved at a young age to California, where her mother started a ranch in the Santa Rosa Valley. Since 1936, Smith operated the Santa Rosa Valley ranch and the Smith ranch near Camarillo Springs.
She raised cows, black Morgan horses and grew 350 acres of row crops. In the early ‘30s, she drove cattle to the Los Angeles stockyard, which was a three-day drive away, said her niece, Mary Howard of Camarillo.
In 1963, Smith donated 120 acres for the creation of the Conejo Mountain Memorial Park. She said she made the donation so that “developers couldn’t get her off her own land when she was dead,” Howard said.
In 1990, Smith worked to keep a new county jail from being built on her land.
Funeral services will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Conejo Mountain Memorial Park chapel in Camarillo.
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