VENTURA : Bones at Project Site Were of Animals

Work crews trying to give downtown Ventura a new look have stumbled across pieces of the city’s history.

Bones and other relics discovered beneath sidewalks delayed work on the beautification project now under way, until it was determined that they were not human remains, officials said Wednesday.

Workers turned up bone fragments Tuesday after digging up a portion of Main Street east of California Street, and work was halted for less than two hours.

Other crews discovered bone remnants several weeks ago, but found that the fragments were from dogs, deer and cattle.

“I took out probably seven pieces, say an inch to two inches long for samples,” said A-lul’koy Lotah, a Chumash consultant overseeing the project.

“Then we left a pocket of them in the ground,” she said. “They were right in the trench where they were working on the pipe, so there was no reason to move them.”

Rick Fierro of Berry General Engineering, the firm doing the downtown improvements, said the discovery of the bones and some well-stacked round stones startled his crews.

“We stopped and let (archeological consultants) come in and find out what they were,” Fierro said. “If it had been of any significance, we would have excavated around it.”

Lotah, who filed a report on the find with city officials, guessed that the animal bones were from the early days of the Ventura Inn, or that someone had simply buried the fragments together.

Centuries ago, the area that is now downtown Ventura was a Chumash village inhabited by thousands of Native Americans, she said.