The Ventura and Ojai Valley Railroad gave

Ojai, California Ojai ( ; Chumash: ''’Awhaỳ'') is a city in Ventura County, California. Located in the Ojai Valley, it is northwest of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara. The valley is part of the east–west trending Western Transverse Ranges and is ...

, a connection to the national rail network Pacific Coast Line at Ventura Junction. Ventura Junction was located at

Southern Pacific The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the ...

Railroad milepost (MP) 397.3 a short distance west of

Ventura station Ventura station (referred to as Ventura–Downtown/Beach station by Metrolink) is a passenger rail station in downtown Ventura, California. The station is served by Amtrak's ''Pacific Surfliner'' from San Luis Obispo to San Diego. Ten ''Pacific ...

. The railway required grades as steep as three percent following the

Ventura River The Ventura River, in western Ventura County in southern California, United States, flows from its headwaters to the Pacific Ocean. The smallest of the three major rivers in Ventura County, it flows through the steeply sloped, narrow Ventura V ...

upstream through Chrisman, Wadstrom, Ortonville, and then turning east through Mira Monte into Ojai. The line completed by Captain John Cross in 1898 became a branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1899. The first passenger train reached Ojai (then called Nordhoff) on 12 March 1898. Trains leaving Ojai at 07:20 and 16:00 made passenger stops at Grant (near Rotary Community Park), Tico, Las Cross, and Weldons before turning around at Ventura to return to Ojai at 13:00 and 20:15. Southern Pacific operated only one daily passenger train during the summer months; and all passenger service ended in the early 1930s. Sources of freight included the Ojai Olive Company

olive oil extraction Olive oil extraction is the process of extracting the oil present in olive drupes, known as olive oil. Olive oil is produced in the mesocarp cells, and stored in a particular type of vacuole called a lipo vacuole, i.e., every cell conta ...

plant built near the Ojai depot in 1901, and the Ojai Orange Association citrus

packing house A packing house is a facility where fruit is received and processed prior to distribution to market. Bulk fruit (such as apples, oranges, pears, and the like) is delivered to the plant via trucks or wagons, where it is dumped into receiving bins ...

built on the east side of Bryant Street about 1910. The packing house was handling from 15% to 20% of the Ventura County citrus production before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, and a Shell

Oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, lique ...

near the Ventura River shipped refined petroleum products from the

Ventura Oil Field The Ventura Oil Field is a large and currently productive oil field A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerog ...

Demise

Pineapple Express Pineapple Express is a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon characterized by a strong and persistent large-scale flow of warm moist air, and the associated heavy precipitation both in the waters immediately northeast of the Hawaii ...

beginning on 18 January 1969 caused the largest and most damaging recorded flood on the Ventura River watershed. Rainfall intensity at Ojai reached per day. Flood damage caused abandonment of the railway upstream of MP 402.68; however, freight service to the refinery at Canet continued until Southern Pacific filed for abandonment of the branch in 1995. The upstream portion of the rail line from Foster Park to Ojai, abandoned in 1969, became the

Ojai Valley Trail The Ventura River Parkway Trail is a southern California rail trail along the Ventura River in Ventura County, California, Ventura County. Roughly paralleling California State Route 33 for from Ventura, California, Ventura to Ojai, California, O ...

completed in 1989; the remaining downstream portion of the line was later opened as the Ventura River Trail in October of 1999.

Locomotives

References

{{Ventura River Defunct California railroads Passenger rail transportation in California Defunct public transport operators in the United States Transportation companies based in California History of Ventura County, California