Mural Brings Tortilla Flats Era to Life

A produce truck spilling its load along Salad Bowl Curve, the Estrada Brothers jazzing it up at the Green Mill Ballroom, an international track star getting set to race a swift, stocky quarter horse.

These are just some of the images being captured along a 500-foot mural springing to life along South Figueroa Street in downtown Ventura.

The colorful panels detail the days and nights of everyday life in Tortilla Flats, the bygone community of farm workers and oil-field hands who provided the muscle in building the foundations of modern Ventura.

“This was a particular time and place in Ventura’s history that was never very well documented,” said Michael Moses Mora, the Ventura native who is coordinating the volunteer art project.

“It was the poor neighborhood.”

Hatched by Mora from an intense desire to preserve a slice of his boyhood, the Tortilla Flats mural seeks to memorialize those who lived in the area now known for Patagonia, a state Department of Transportation yard and a freeway interchange.

They shopped at Benny’s Market, dined at the Cottage Cafe and dwindled away afternoons at the original Seaside Park. When the freeways came, most moved north along Ventura Avenue. Many of the families live in the area even today.

“When expansion came, it went eastward and up on The Avenue,” Mora said. “But these were the actual people who built this town, who worked this town.”

Funded in part by a grant from the city of Ventura, Mora and local artist M. B. Hanrahan have spent months researching the community, interviewing former residents and seeking out descendants to fill in the gaps.

They expect the project to cost $6,000 and plan to finish it next month. Companies and residents are invited to sponsor panels for $100 each.

With the help of volunteers and grammar school students, Mora and Hanrahan began sketching the panels now attached to the Figueroa Street wall across from the Ventura County Fairgrounds.

“We wanted the younger generation to come and paint on the mural so that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren would have a direct link to preserving the old neighborhood,” Mora said.

Andy Keller is among the volunteers. Earlier this week, he began painting the faces of local Korean War veterans depicted on a panel culled from an old photograph.

“Three months ago, this was just a beat-up old wall,” said Keller, a Ventura video technician. “Now it looks good, and it makes people happy.”

Each of the two dozen or so scenes reflects a different aspect of life in Tortilla Flats.

One sketch portrays a group of young boys pole fishing from a raft on the Ventura River. Nearby, grizzled men are shown huddled in a campground at Hobo Jungle, just north of the river mouth.

In another, fruit is tumbling from a teetering farm truck on Salad Bowl Curve, a stretch of road that no longer exists.

“They called it that because it happened constantly,” Mora said. “For every picture you see here, there are a lot of stories.”

Another panel shows a match race from the early 1950s between Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens and Shorty T, a quarter horse owned by Johnny Barrios.

“I got to meet Jesse Owens and shake his hand,” said Barrios, who said Owens pulled up midway through the 50-yard dash, the victim of a leg cramp.

Ed Robings, executive director of the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, said the disappearance of Tortilla Flats has gone largely unnoticed.

“The trouble is, in the past, the history that’s been recorded has usually been the history of politicians, community leaders and people who held high office,” Robings said.

“Every person has a story,” he said. “But there have to be some people who have lived there and know the stories of Tortilla Flats.”

Michael Maynez, a 71-year-old actor who has lived in Ventura for nearly 60 years, said the project will foster a sense of the city’s less glamorous past.

“It’s good to have a history of what this place was once,” said Maynez, strolling by the mural Wednesday. “We forget our history sometimes, and that’s too bad.”