Wild, Wild North

It’s a meandering, mostly two-lane highway that stretches from Ventura Beach, past the oil-rich Kern County towns of Maricopa and Taft and deep into the California heartland.

California 33 is the only state route leading into the vast northern reaches of Ventura County, those remote corners that few people visit and even fewer dare to inhabit.

First known as Maricopa Road, the rustic highway hints at its former incarnation as an Old West mountain trail. Long gone are the wild-eyed bears and bandits that for generations threatened anyone crossing from Cuyama Valley to Ventura.

But north of Pine Mountain, remnants of the past still linger: abandoned outposts built by traders and trappers, crumbling adobes stacked by Chumash settlers, and split-rail fences dripping with rusty barbed wire that lock in nothing but open space.

Carving a modern road through such raw land “has probably been a double-edged sword,” U.S. Forest Service planner Leslie Jehnings said.

California 33 “has had definite ecological impacts over the long haul,” she said. “But it also produced an easy method to move back and forth between the coast and the inland valley.”

When California 33 finally was scratched across the rugged mountains of Los Padres National Forest 63 years ago, it provided for the first time a direct link between desolate Cuyama Valley homesteads and the county seat in San Buenaventura.

For decades, remote high-country farmers and cattle ranchers had grumbled about having to endure the one-way, 175-mile excursion to pay their taxes or conduct other government business in oil-bustling San Buenaventura.

The new route whittled the weeklong journey to just 35 miles, passable in less than a day.

Famous for its stunning beauty and natural wildlife, California 33 is the only thoroughfare in Ventura County designated by the state Department of Transportation as a scenic highway.

California 33 begins at Ventura Beach. It starts as two wide lanes in each direction just south of the Ventura River where speeds can average 65 mph or faster.

But a few miles up the road at Foster Park, it squeezes into a narrower two-lane highway, where traffic slows to 30 mph and the neighborhood is vulnerable to seasonal flooding.

During the January 1995 flood, mud and debris gushed across the pavement.

“The creek got blocked up with trees and stuff and water and mud ran up onto the road,” said Gary Cross, a retired electrician who has lived on the highway near Casitas Springs for 16 years.

“I had to stay home,” he said. “There was no way to get out on the road.”

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In earlier decades, winter snow in the upper elevations would be pushed aside and the road would be regraded each spring.

During World War II, Army and Navy personnel shuttled by railroad from a military outpost in Ojai to Ventura and beyond. Until a flood in 1969, trains carried tourists into the Ojai Valley and hauled the region’s famous oranges from an old packinghouse near downtown Ojai.

The rail line generally followed the highway, and was converted to a bicycle and riding trail after the flood washed out the tracks. Today, the Ojai Valley Trail caters to horseback riders, bicyclists and joggers.

Woodcarver Vern Fields has practiced his craft at California 33 and Nye Road, just north of Casitas Springs, for 15 years. Drivers used to seeing Fields hacking away at a tree stump wave as they pass.

Traffic has increased steadily in recent years, even to the point where it slows bumper-to-bumper during peak commute hours, Fields says.

“Everybody must think Ojai is something special,” he says between stabs at a trunk of wood he will whittle into a replica of the Virgin Mary. “People keep moving in.”

When Dennis Cassidy was a boy growing up near Ojai, he did odd jobs at Rancho Arnaz, the landmark dried fruit and nut stand where California 33 meets San Antonio Creek.

He now owns the place.

“It’s still keeping its rustic charm,” Cassidy said of the Ojai Valley. “But it’s getting urbanized, too. We have a lot of locals who shop here, but most of my customers are people from out of town heading up to Ojai.”

Lanie Jo Springer of Oak View chairs a volunteer panel aimed at protecting California 33. The committee in recent years has gained numerous improvements for the highway and spawned a “Courtesy on 33” bumper-sticker campaign.

California 33 not only deserves its unique standing as a scenic highway, but is one of the more storied roads in Ventura County history, Springer said.

“It was the old stagecoach road to Nordhoff before Ojai was even called Ojai,” she said. “And the Pony Express used to stop at the Oak View post office in the 1870s.”

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Although most of the potholes along the highway have been repaired, the Highway 33 Committee has turned its attention to fixing the cracks that seem to be spreading across many sections of the roadway.

“They say the funds are not available to keep it as highly maintained as it should be,” Springer said. “It hasn’t been oiled or maintained, so it’s starting to crack. Then when it rains, we’ve got real problems.”

But business owners are taking advantage of the increasing traffic. Besides well-established Ojai, commercial districts have sprung up in recent decades in the unincorporated communities of Oak View, Mira Monte and Meiners Oaks.

More than 25,000 people now live in the Ojai Valley.

Just inside the Ojai city limits, the highway takes a sharp left, heading north to Wheeler Hot Springs and beyond. It will dead-end unceremoniously hundreds of miles later outside Stockton.

Two lanes snake through Los Padres National Forest, and California 33 becomes an isolated highway driven mostly by tourists seeking Ventura County snow or by mountain residents hiding out from civilization.

Beyond Wheeler Gorge--a popular state campground about six miles above Ojai--there is little to see but wilderness.

Rose Valley and Pine Mountain are miles ahead, and the nearest phone booth is at The Wheel, a hard-floored country bar where outsiders are not warmly received.

“This area is mostly for people that just want to be away from the city,” bartender Patty Warren said. “It’s just a tavern on the outskirts of town.”

A tight community of about a dozen families has settled in small trailers and cabins on the hillside above the bar. Across the road, the historic Wheeler Hot Springs spa caters to a well-heeled clientele seeking peace and relaxation.

But a steady stream of mountain men and isolationists drifts through Los Padres National Forest, some of whom pack weapons and look for trouble. Up here, Ventura County rarely sends a single deputy to answer a disturbance call.

“Some of the people up there don’t have a lot of respect for the business of law enforcement,” said Lt. Jim Barrett, who commands the Ojai Valley sheriff’s substation.

“Sometimes, they’re kind of reclusive people who don’t like to deal with officials of any kind,” Barrett said. “That’s why they live in some of those places.”

Not infrequently, homicide victims and other bodies turn up along the remote folds of California 33.

“It’s been a couple years since we had any, but from time to time, we do find bodies up there,” said Barrett, who estimated that a dozen corpses have been found there over the past decade.

“They’re not all murders either,” he said. “Sometimes they’re a suicide victim and the relatives don’t want to call the authorities.”

Planning for the mountain pass that became California 33 began in 1890, when John Barry surveyed the range land between Nordhoff and the Cuyama Valley, which stretches from northeast Santa Barbara County into upper Ventura County.

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A crude wagon road was established a year later, but efforts to improve the thoroughfare went for naught.

Cuyama Valley ranchers--unhappy residents of Ventura County--grew weary of making the 175-mile trek around Lake Elizabeth, not far from what is now Palmdale, to pay their property taxes in San Buenaventura.

For years they clamored loudly for a highway south through what was then called the Santa Barbara National Forest.

“The people in Cuyama Valley were especially anxious for a path to the beach,” remembers Pete Mason, who in the 1930s worked as a flagman for the state Division of Highways, a precursor to what is now Caltrans.”They were still in Ventura County, and anything they had to do in the county, they had to come to Ventura, which was 175 miles away on the old Ridge Route,” Mason said.

But the ranchers’ pleas went unanswered until prosperous oil interests in Maricopa and Taft began searching for a quick route to the coast to escape the searing summer temperatures of the Central Valley. In 1911, the oil barons led a caravan to Ventura to stir up interest in a Maricopa pass.

Tourism officials in San Buenaventura immediately seized upon the idea and joined the push. Ventura County supervisors commissioned a new survey, but the project stalled for lack of money.

In 1926, local officials in Santa Barbara, Kern and Ventura counties teamed up with state Sen. George Mott of Santa Paula and Assemblyman Roger Edwards of Saticoy to secure state and federal tax dollars to begin design work. A celebration dinner kicking off construction was held April 26, 1929, at the Pierpont Inn in Ventura.

A combination of contractors and day laborers used steam engines and hand tools to scratch the road out of 70 miles of rock and rugged wilderness.

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More than 300 men worked 30 hours a week grading the path that would cross two mountain ranges and average an elevation above 3,000 feet. They built eight bridges, including a 260-foot concrete span across Sespe Creek.

Their tough and treacherous work paid off. Four years and $1.8 million later, on a crisp Sunday morning, Oct. 22, 1933, the gravelly Maricopa Road was opened to traffic.

“In those days, the bare-bones labor was 40 cents an hour,” said Bill Friend, a local historian and fourth-generation Ventura County native who remembers the opening-day festivities.

“It was a big thing,” he said. “The Maricopa Road tied the communities [of Maricopa, Cuyama Valley and Ventura] together.”

More than 35,000 people attended the celebration held that weekend near Cuyama. Ten thousand of those bought tickets for a barbecue, where revelers ate beef from 67 steers, drank 14,000 bottles of beer and 5,000 bottles of soda. No less than 25 speeches were delivered.

Residents of the Cuyama Valley were excited to finally have a graded road they could take to the beach. News accounts of the celebration said it was the largest crowd ever assembled in Cuyama Valley.

“It was an amazing party,” said Jehnings, the U.S. Forest Service planner. “They even threw a parade.”

Maricopa Road quickly became a substitute for the old Ridge Route, which was a slow, dusty wagon road that crossed Los Padres and Angeles national forests, then wound back through Soledad Canyon and the Santa Clara River Valley.

An older, even rougher trail had been chopped through Matilija Canyon before Maricopa Road was dedicated in 1933. But that stretch of dirt was never really passable by carriage, Jehnings said.

Rather, it was a steep and dangerous switchback that invited peril around nearly every bend. Villains and wild animals victimized travelers who were unsuspecting of human nature or unfamiliar with the law of the land.

“The old Matilija Trail was harrowing for people trying to traverse it,” Jehnings said. “It was subject to flooding and there was always the packs of bandidos. And there were wild animals out there trying to find food.”

Throughout the early part of this century, forest ranger Jacinto Reyes served as the local law enforcement, providing travelers assistance or a strong arm, whichever was needed.

“He fought off bears, which there were a lot of in those days,” Jehnings said. “And he served as a guide for the homesteaders who made their way through the Matilija [Trail] on their way to Ventura.”

In 1994, the federal government named a 46-mile segment of California 33 the Jacinto Reyes Scenic Byway. Reyes was the first Latino hired as a U.S. Forest Service ranger.

Although the rocks and gravel of Maricopa Road have been replaced by asphalt and striped paint, the highway remains treacherous. Its sharp twists, jagged rock edges and roadside eucalyptus trees have killed at least 15 people since 1990, according to Caltrans.

California 33 has become more heavily traveled than Reyes on his horseback patrol could ever have imagined.

Around Casitas Springs, California 33 is so bustling that the highway committee has posted signs urging drivers not to exceed 30 mph and has dogged work crews to complete much-needed repairs.

“I’m very surprised at how effective that effort has been,” Ojai Mayor Nina V. Shelley said. “I drive through Casitas Springs several times a week, and everybody slows down, regardless of the time of day.”

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In 1990, 38,000 cars a day drove California 33 where it meets the Ventura Freeway, according to Caltrans. That number rose to 39,500 by 1994, the latest numbers available.

But other than increased traffic, local residents and state traffic engineers agree that not much has changed along California 33 in recent decades.

Local leaders have staunchly fought off multiple attempts to widen the highway for fear of further congestion, smog and a decline in the quality of life that Ojai Valley residents savor.

“If we were ever to become just another small town along a road, our revenue from tourism would diminish,” Shelley said. “It’s our rural charm that brings people here.”

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About This Series

“On the Road: Journeys Along Ventura County’s Highways” is a five-part series profiling some of the most heavily traveled thoroughfares in the county. On previous Sundays, the focus has been on the Ventura Freeway, California 126 and California 23. Today’s installment features California 33, which strikes off through the county’s rugged northern reaches on a course once menaced by bears and bandits.