Best Cultural Landmark Oxnard Near Me

4worldlovers: As the pioneer settlement of the first farmers in the Oxnard Plain, the Oxnard Historic Farm Park is home to the two oldest buildings (the 1872 Farmhouse and the 1876 Winery) built by Gottfried Maulhardtt, a towering 1800s Canary Island Date Palm, an 1890s Carriage House, an 1870s spring wagon that once belonged to Johannes Borchard, two vineyards of 1880s Zinfandel Blanc grapes of cuttings from Santa Cruz Island, two 1903 lima bean threshers built by the Ventura Implement Company, 8 vintage tractors, plows and other farm implements, a lemon orchard, an avocado grove, and five historically representative gardens…oh, and that doesn’t even account for our numerous exhibitions of historic photos and farm implements that show the evolution of farming in the Oxnard Plain over the past three centuries!

4worldlovers:
Weeds and neglect have, for more than half a century, haunted a south Oxnard graveyard older than the city itself.


Now, the Hueneme Masonic Cemetery on Pleasant Valley Road has a new owner and a group of residents keen to restore it. The 4-acre parcel is associated with pioneer farming, banking and business families whose names are familiar from local street signs and buildings: Saviers, Arnold, Levy, Naumann, Pidduck and others.


"These are people who lived, worked and died here, but they've been forgotten," said Oxnard funeral director Roberto Garcia of Garcia Mortuary while looking over the site on a recent afternoon. "We're going to bring it back to life."


Garcia bought the property from the Hueneme Masonic Cemetery Association about a year ago. The association was founded in 1898, five years before Oxnard incorporated as a city.


Ice plants and other vegetation that long choked the grounds have been cleared away, leaving bare dirt and headstones on the lot sandwiched between Pleasant Valley and Etting roads. Some buried headstones have been unearthed, others lost to vandals.

The site needs water and lights, Garcia said. Greenery will be a given, and century-old eucalyptus trees ringing the area provide another opportunity for rebirth: monarch butterflies that cluster here.

Earlier this month, organizers held the first of what they hope will be an annual event.

Nancy Cozza used funds from a city arts grant for a Day of the Dead and monarch butterfly festival. The fall arrival of monarchs in Mexico is associated with the Día de los Muertos celebration, she said.

"Knowing those two things went together well, it just came together," she said.

An adopt-a-plot effort has also been launched with Cozza and others involved.

Tom Von Allmen, whose great-grandparents the Ottes are buried at the cemetery, said about eight to 10 people have been attending adopt-a-plot committee meetings. They hope to get more active when the new year starts.

He imagines participants would hoe weeds and clean up plots two to three times a year. They might restore markers and contact family members.

"It was in a state of disrepair, even desecration," Von Allmen said. "Very prominent families from the past are buried there, which is one of the reasons everybody has taken an interest in it."

Last December, during cleanup work, Garcia unearthed a eucalyptus stump that floored him when he saw figuring resembling Jesus' face.

"To me, it's a sign," he said. The stump is currently at the mortuary but will eventually be moved back to the cemetery.

In recent years, members of the Anacapa Masonic Lodge in Oxnard have organized cleanup days several times a year, local Mason Gary Adkinson said. Masons from several regional lodges and area businesses have donated thousands of dollars to clean up weeds and debris, he said.

Garcia believes about 50 to 60 people are still buried at the Masonic cemetery. At one point there were 111 or more, he said. But when Ivy Lawn Cemetery opened in 1917 in Ventura, some remains were moved there. Ivy Lawn proved more popular, Garcia and others say, because it provided ongoing plot maintenance, which the Masonic cemetery did not.

In 2012, the Ventura County Cultural Heritage Board recommended the Hueneme Masonic Cemetery become a county landmark.

"The (cemetery association)'s founding members and principal stockholders were all pioneers in the county," the heritage board's staff report reads. "They were founding fathers of their community and driving forces in the growth and development of Ventura County."

The association's original directors included farmer Winfield Scott Saviers and banker Achille Levy, the report notes, whose Bank of A. Levy lasted 113 years before First Interstate Bank completed a purchase in 1995.

Gary Blum, a Cultural Heritage Board member, said the Oxnard City Council never took up the board's recommendation.

The graveyard was originally nearly 10 acres, with 358 grave sites planned, according to the heritage board report, but some land was later sold, perhaps to raise funds for maintenance.

The Japanese Cemetery at Etting and Pleasant Valley, now separated from the Masonic site by a vacant lot, was part of the original acreage. It was sold to the Buddhist Church in 1908, the heritage board report says. At the time, it notes, "separate cemeteries for nonwhites were a reality of an age of blatant and open discrimination in California."

The Japanese Cemetery as well as giant gum and eucalyptus trees planted by the cemetery association have been designated county landmarks.