Staying Out of Ojai’s Former Lockup Is Proving Easy

Squat, unadorned and often mistaken for an outhouse, Ojai’s former jail will soon be on view to the public -- as the city’s newest landmark.

That is, if someone can open the door.

To prevent vandalism, workers long ago welded it shut, and windows on the escape-proof, reinforced-concrete building are fist-sized. So, to get inside, someone will have to pry the door off.

And maybe lob in a bug bomb to clear out the black widows.

So the jail, hidden behind a hill in Libbey Park, was not opened as planned for the town’s recent Ojai Day celebration but should be ready by January.

Barely 23 feet across and 15 feet wide, it has four barred cells, eight cots hanging from chains, plus sinks, toilets and a light.

Graffiti include Bob Dylan lyrics and “LSD is here to stay.”

Once opened, city officials will preserve the graffiti with clear lacquer, spruce up the fixtures and put bars or some other viewing barrier across the front so visitors can peek in.

Built in 1929 on land that cost $10, the building replaced a wooden jail constructed in 1874 in the backyard of the town’s constable and undertaker, Andrew Vancuren. He stored coffins in it as well as inmates.

By the 1920s, city officials wanted a stronger, more central jail, but the aging Vancuren refused to move it from his yard. After he died in 1923, the city built the concrete jail.

It was a charmless box in a town just honing a reputation for thoughtful architecture, but it held drunks and petty thieves well enough.

And it was strong.

Former Ojai Police Chief Vince France grew up in Ojai. As a child, France said, he set off quarter-sticks of dynamite outside the jail.

The blasts rattled prisoners but didn’t harm the building.

Longtime Ojai resident Bill Lotts, 78, said he spent a night there in the mid-1950s after arguing with an officer who ticketed him for parking on the wrong side of Aliso Street. Lotts had parked briefly to ask his girlfriend to dinner.

The judge threw out the case the next morning, and Lotts said he later learned the officer had been dating the same girl.

But Lotts vividly recalls his night in the clink. The officer locked him in, shut off the light and left. Lying in the dark, Lotts wondered if anyone would hear if he screamed.

An intercom linked the jail to the police station, then about two football field-lengths away in Ojai’s Arcade. The intercom was hooked to a wire strung through the oaks, across Ojai Avenue and down into the station. Squirrels could eat through the wire and no one would know, Lotts worried.

France also worried. After storms, he would check the wire, which the wind often knocked out of the trees.

One hot day, France opened the jail’s outer door to keep the prisoners cool and returned to the station. Later, he heard cracklings over the intercom. At the jail he found the inmates drunk and rowdy, with buddies passing beers in through the bars.

He arrested the friends and let everyone sleep it off -- inside.

For some of the 600 people held over the years, the bumpy ride through the bushes was more terrifying than the lockup itself, France said.

One drunk’s eyes got as big as silver dollars as France drove behind the park.

“He said, ‘What are you going to do to me?’ ” France said.

But jail time wasn’t bad, as jail time goes. Only minor offenders stayed. Hard-core criminals went to the Ventura County Jail. Animosity didn’t exist, France said. Ojai was like the fictional Mayberry from the old Andy Griffith TV show.

France even did one inmate’s Christmas shopping, then dropped him off at home for a conjugal visit.

Most prisoners spent more time outside than in. With no meal service, officers took inmates to Loops Restaurant for breakfast, lunch and dinner and would dine with their jailbirds.

“I don’t know what we would have done if we had gotten a call,” France said.

Inmates kept busy. Most gardened city grounds. And France remembers one regular drunk in the early 1960s, whom the police kept busy making bullets.

That inmate was also a good carpenter, France said. Police looked forward to his incarcerations because he would do handiwork around City Hall.

By the late 1960s, Ojai had become a mecca for the drug culture and the jail housed less friendly inmates. But that was its swan song.

In 1972, just before the city contracted its police work to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, state officials said the jail no longer met regulations.

The city replaced it with an in-station holding cell, and no one stays overnight in Ojai today. All detainees go to County Jail.

All that remains is the question of how to get the door open.