Breaking Away : Ventura County Struggled for Its Freedom, Won in 1872

Between munching on hot dogs and gazing at fireworks, most Ventura County residents will pause today with other Americans to remember their nation’s fight for independence.

But, as usual, there won’t be much talk about another historic struggle for freedom a lot closer to home--a battle that made this county what it is today.

That was the revolutionary fight for Ventura County’s own independence from Santa Barbara County--admittedly obscure as fights for freedom go, but a fight for freedom nonetheless.

To be honest about it, even the descendants of the key players in Ventura County’s break from Santa Barbara County don’t seem to have much emotional involvement in the matter.

The details are a little sketchy--not quite the stuff of legend. Historians agree, however, that just as with the American rebels, taxes had something to do with it.

Another big issue for the 3,500 Ventura County residents back in 1872 was the desire for local government.

Not for all of them, however. Ventura County had its own Tories, those who thought that the county was better staying with Santa Barbara because it looked to be an easier path.

But William Dewey Hobson--who was sort of our George Washington--wasn’t the kind of man to take orders from far away, even if Santa Barbara was going to end up with its own Nordstrom a century later.

Hobson wasn’t the first Ventura County leader to try to break away from Santa Barbara County. But he was the man who finally got the job done.

Sentiment to separate Ventura from Santa Barbara County began to grow in the late 1860s. It was spurred when large Mexican-owned ranchos were subdivided and offered for sale to small farmers and fruit growers in the Ventura area.

That started a mini-population boom, as immigrants from the East and South came in search of cheap land and relief from the Civil War. Business in the little township of San Buenaventura also began to grow.

Geographic obstacles were also a consideration. There were no easy routes from Ventura to Santa Barbara. Travelers in horse-drawn carriages had to brave the Rincon at low tide to make the four-hour trip to the county seat in Santa Barbara.

In addition, the discovery of oil in fields near Santa Paula and Ventura spurred the local residents’ desire to keep money and taxes circulating locally--an idea that didn’t sit well with the bureaucrats in Santa Barbara.

The proposed new county had an assessed valuation of $1.2 million, an amount the Santa Barbara County tax collector did not want to lose, historian Yda Addis Storke wrote in 1891.

So Santa Barbara County had its guard up in 1869 when Ventura’s Angel G. Escandon was elected to the state Assembly and began pushing a bill for a separate Ventura County. Escandon’s bill was defeated. But the revolution had formally begun.

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It wasn’t that everybody in the county was exactly thrilled with breaking away from Santa Barbara. In fact, one key opponent of Escandon’s bill was Ventura County’s Thomas R. Bard.

Maybe Bard’s opposition stemmed from the fact that he was a Santa Barbara County supervisor as well as a resident of Port Hueneme. To this day, however, Bard’s descendants say they do not know why the family pioneer, who went on to represent California in the U. S. Senate, turned Tory at the crucial moment.

“It wasn’t really discussed when we were growing up,” said Joanna Bard Newton, 76, Thomas R. Bard’s granddaughter. “He was the Tory in the story, yes. But what his motivation was, I have no idea.”

Tories or no Tories, however, Ventura County’s revolutionary spirit wasn’t so easily extinguished.

In the second attempt at gaining independence, Ventura turned to Hobson, a prominent businessman with connections in Sacramento. Hobson had lived in Sacramento for several years, running a well-known hotel, before settling in Ventura in 1857.

“There were many weeks of acrimonious debate, many hot political fights, preceding the cutoff of Ventura County from the parent county of Santa Barbara,” one historian wrote. “The mother county did not want the child to go.”

But Hobson proved so skillful at guiding the separation bill through the Assembly and later the Senate that it passed with only one dissenting vote on March 22, 1872.

He spent an entire winter in Sacramento coaxing votes out of the state Legislature. It wasn’t exactly Valley Forge. But it will have to do.

The law establishing a separate Ventura County officially took effect Jan. 1, 1873.

When news of the separation reached Ventura, “great bonfires were lit up in various parts of town, and with the assistance of barrels of fluid petroleum, the heavens were illuminated with garish light,” according to the Santa Barbara Times.

“There was a general and promiscuous jollification, lasting away into the night,” the newspaper reported.

For his role, historians dubbed Hobson the Father of Ventura County.

Katherine Haley, a great-granddaughter of Hobson, said she is proud of his image as Ventura County’s George Washington.

“Don’t you think it would be insane if you lived near Piru and had to go by horse all the way to Santa Barbara to file a paper?” said Haley, who lives in Ventura.

“He did what needed to be done. It was a very good thing.”

On that point, historians agree.

“It was an important milestone,” said Charles Johnson, librarian at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art. “There was already an identity here, separate from Santa Barbara.”

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For the first time, Ventura County was free to take action without first consulting the mother county, Johnson said. And even Santa Barbara County seemed to see the wisdom of the split. According to an editorial of the era, Santa Barbara’s last wish was that the “healthy brat” would never grow up to trash its “old mother.”

Fat chance. More than a century later, there’s still a rivalry between the two counties.

Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn is just one official who takes the view that Santa Barbara County looks down its nose at its only begotten child.

“I think they tend to sling mud at us,” Flynn said. “And they still treat us as a child, by the way.”

Whenever Ventura County happens to share a political district with Santa Barbara County, he said, organizers from the north swoop down and boss campaign workers in Ventura County, telling them exactly how to run the campaign.

Still, said Flynn, who was born in Ventura County but grew up in Santa Barbara County, he would not mind sparking a counterrevolution seeking to reunite Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

“I will issue an invitation to the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors to initiate a process to bring us back together,” he said. “They need our help, our direction, our political talent.”

The likelihood of that happening, of course, is about the same as the United States rejoining England.

And while Flynn jokes about rejoining Santa Barbara County, most local politicians view the split as a move that was definitely for the best.

“It certainly was a good deal for me,” said Sheriff Larry Carpenter, the 27th elected sheriff since the county’s formation. “I got a job out of it.”