Fillmore is a tightknit rural community in Ventura County surrounded by citrus groves and mountains.

Although Carl and Tracey Gaither had spent nine years happily raising their growing family in the northern Ventura County community of Fillmore, they had refrained from buying a home there.

The chance to live closer to Carl’s family in Oklahoma, and the promise of cheap real estate, were beckoning the Gaithers.

But the couple nixed their plans and decided to settle in Fillmore after their youngest son, Jacob, was discovered to have autism, a neurological disorder.

The support the Gaithers received from the tightknit town showed the family of five that Fillmore was the place for them.

Fillmore school officials reached out to Jacob, moving quickly to provide the 6-year-old with his own full-time tutor. Jacob’s kindergarten classmates also embraced their peer, helping to lure him out of his world and into theirs.

“We made the decision to stay in Fillmore because the school district and the community had been so wonderful to us,” Tracey Gaither, 38, said. “This is a town that really looks after its people.”

Tucked away in the mountains of Ventura County off California 126, Fillmore began as a railroad town more than a century ago and later grew into an agricultural community surrounded by citrus groves. Over the years, the city of some 13,000 residents has managed to maintain its folksy ways despite being only about an hour’s drive from Los Angeles.

Latinos comprise an estimated 65% of Fillmore’s population and some families have lived in the city for generations.

“Most have been around for many years,” said Fillmore Mayor Evaristo Barajas, a 30-year resident. “There are third- and fourth-generation Latino families here.”

For Enedina Vasquez-Garcia, the fact that both her family and husband Gustavo’s family had settled in Fillmore helped convince them to buy in the city.

The couple, aided by Oralia Herrera with RE/MAX Gold Coast Realtors, purchased a three-bedroom, two-bath home for $150,000 in 1996.

City Loan Program

Vasquez-Garcia said she and her husband had a particularly positive experience working with their lender and with Fillmore housing officials who assisted them in applying for the city’s low-income mortgage program.

“They were so helpful,” she said.

But there were a few obstacles to overcome back at home. Because the house was being used as a rental, it was filled with another family’s belongings when they first saw it and it lacked landscaping.

“We had to have some imagination,” said Vasquez-Garcia, a 46-year-old instructional assistant for the Fillmore Unified School District.

During the last two years, family members, who include 14-year-old daughter Lennis and 10-year-old son Luiselias, have worked to make the home their own by planting roses, and orange, lemon and guava trees in their backyard.

“I see myself living here for the rest of my life,” Vasquez-Garcia said. “And I’m sure my kids will go off to school and come back to Fillmore.”

As Southern California real estate prices go, the city is an affordable place to buy a home.

The Gaithers recently purchased a 1,600-square-foot ranch house with three bedrooms, two baths and a large den for $168,000. A spacious backyard has banana and orange trees; from the frontyard, the family has a breathtaking view of the mountains that surround the Santa Clara Valley.

“The house had what we needed for the kids, which was plenty of room,” added Carl Gaither, a 42-year-old pumper for Vintage Petroleum Inc.

Fillmore’s median sale price is in the $130,000-to-$140,0000 range, making it attractive to first-time buyers who find themselves priced out of such neighboring cities as Ventura and Camarillo.

One of the lowest prices paid last year was $95,000 for a two-bedroom bank-owned property in north Fillmore, according to Kay Wilson-Bolton, who owns Century 21 Buena Vista and has been selling real estate in the Santa Clara Valley for 23 years.

At the high end, Wilson-Bolton sold a 4,500-square-foot home, custom built in the 1950s on eight acres, for $700,000. An Orange County couple purchased the contemporary-style home, which came with a tennis court, pool and sauna, wine cellar and four acres of mature avocado trees.

“We call Fillmore one of Ventura County’s great-kept secrets,” said Wilson-Bolton, whose agent, Guy Inglis, represented the Gaithers in their purchase. “It’s rural, it’s small and it remains in a sort of natural state.”

Begun Around Railroad

Founded in 1888, the town was named after Jerome Fillmore, general superintendent of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Fillmore began around the railroad, but later citrus farms and the discovery of oil fueled its growth.

Citrus groves seem to encircle the city and in many cases are adjacent to homes, promoting the rural feeling that residents cherish. For two decades, Fillmore resident Blanca Ferrer, 70, has loved living among the city’s citrus orchards.

“It makes you feel free,” Ferrer said. “You don’t see the simmering sidewalks in the summer or the crowding like you do in the San Fernando Valley.”

Ferrer recalled how she and her husband fled Sylmar and settled in nearby Piru during the 1960s, fearing crime in the Valley. The couple moved to Fillmore with their four children in 1976 to purchase a new ranch-style tract home for $37,000.

Today, Ferrer rents a duplex so that her daughter and grandchildren can live in the more spacious home, which she now estimates is worth $150,000.

“We’re very well situated in the middle of the valley, right below the mountains,” Ferrer said. ‘It’s a comfortable atmosphere for my family and I.”

The orchards add charm, but it’s the mountains surrounding the city that help create a buffer zone from the outside world.

“Because of the area’s natural barriers, we’ll always be a small town,” said Chappy Morris Sr., whose father founded the town’s Chevrolet dealership in 1929. “Sometimes in the spring when the mountains are covered with snow, it feels like we’re in Switzerland.”

That’s not to say Fillmore hasn’t changed. Over the years the town has evolved into a bedroom community, with many residents using California 126 to commute to and from work. The city of Ventura is 24 miles to the west and Santa Clarita is 19 miles to the east.

California 126 is one of two ways to get into and out of Fillmore and is expected to be expanded to four lanes between Ventura and Interstate 5 by April. The other route is Grimes Canyon Road, which winds for 12 miles between Fillmore and Moorpark.

Fillmore’s location has helped it retain its small-town charm, as has the city’s approach to new development. Since Fillmore incorporated in 1917, it has grown at a rate of roughly 3% each year, sparing it many of the urban ills that afflict larger Southern California cities.

“I get complaints from constituents if they have to wait more than 30 seconds for a traffic light to change,” City Councilman Roger Campbell said. “That’s our idea of traffic in this town.”

Ventura County’s sheriff’s officials describe Fillmore as “a very safe community.” Authorities say property crimes are their greatest concern and that residents’ feelings of safety have perhaps indirectly contributed to the 328 residential and vehicle burglaries reported in 1997.

“We did a study and found that close to 70% of the burglaries were crimes of opportunity, which means homeowners simply weren’t locking their doors and windows,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Fred Bustillos said. “There’s a sense of security here.”

Not surprisingly, residents tend to know one another in Fillmore. Mayor Barajas, who is also a real estate broker and accountant, said small-town ways can be both good and bad.

“It’s good when you’re walking around because everyone says hi, but if there’s a rumor going around, it’s going to get around quick,” Barajas said.

A Rancher Descendant

Added Fillmore native Bismark Basolo: “Unless you live here, you don’t dare say anything about anybody because the person you’re talking to is probably a relative.”

A descendant of one of the area’s original ranching families, Basolo, 71, returned to Fillmore in 1988 after his wife, with whom he had raised a family in Ventura, died. He purchased a small home in a quaint midcity neighborhood for $159,000.

“I love the hills and the climate,” Basolo said. “The evenings in the summertime are perfect, and at night I can still walk downtown, which is really about the same as it was when I was a child growing up here.”

Basolo’s home is two doors from his 95-year-old mother’s home, a Spanish-style California bungalow that the city of Los Angeles built for the family in 1928, after the St. Francis dam collapsed, unleashing 12 billion gallons of water reserved for Los Angeles residents.

The avalanche of water, which destroyed the family’s home and killed Basolo’s uncle along with at least 449 others, is still a frequent topic among the town’s old-timers.

Basolo meets a group of his childhood friends regularly at Morris’ car dealership, where they discuss current events over coffee and sandwiches in a conference room.

As they look to the future, many residents have cast suspicious eyes toward the 21,000-home Newhall Ranch project planned for the banks of the Santa Clara River, just east of the Ventura County border.

Flooding Concerns

Fillmore has not been immune to flooding, given that the Santa Clara River runs through parts of it, so there is concern about thousands of new homes covering precious soil that would otherwise soak up rainwater.

Brush fires and earthquakes are among the other natural disasters that residents have had to learn to cope with. Fillmore was struck particularly hard during the 1994 Northridge quake, when two-thirds of its business district came tumbling down, but the community has since recovered nicely.

A new city hall sits just south of the quaint Central Avenue district, where tickets for a first-run movie are $6.

In recent years, city leaders have struggled to promote Fillmore as a tourist destination.

An excursion train hosts murder-mystery dinners and, during holiday seasons, passengers can ride the train to local fields to pick a pumpkin or chop down a Christmas tree. The Giessinger Winery--Fillmore’s first--has also been frequently touted as a tourist attraction since UCLA laser physics professor Edouard R. Giessinger opened it two years ago.

Fillmore is also a popular filming destination for the entertainment industry, which loves to shoot among its orchards and quaint buildings.

Just last month, actress Jane Seymour was in town filming scenes for a television movie at Fillmore High School.

Plans for a golf course and 400 homes on the outskirts of town are on the drawing board, according to Campbell, the city councilman.

With an eye toward preserving the town’s ambience, city officials strongly encourage developers to build neo-traditional homes that blend into the existing community, he added.

“They have to have porches so that, when they’re built, it feels like they are part of old town Fillmore,” Campbell said.