The City of Newbury Park

Newbury Park’s Highlights and History

Newbury Park was ranked one of the “Top 100 Places to Live” by Money Magazine. The community is rich with parks and trails for exploring, hiking, and biking. It boasts a family-friendly environment. Newbury Park has an increasing population due to the presence of biotechnology firms and technology corporations, such as Amgen’s world headquarters and Baxter, as well as numerous other tech businesses.

The area now known as Newbury Park was first inhabited by the Chumash Indians and has many ancient burial sites along the Santa Monica Mountains in the southern portion of the area, many artifacts have been discovered in the surrounding areas.

Originally, Newbury Park was part of the City of Thousand Oaks. The city of Newbury Park is named after Egbert Starr Newbury, the first postmaster in the Conejo Valley, who purchased thousands of acres of land in the Conejo Valley in the late 1870’s. Thanks to the Janss Investment Company, Newbury Park later became a master planned community like its neighbor, Thousand Oaks in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s.

Newbury Park

Few cities in America are as blessed as Ventura County’s Newbury Park. Set in beautiful Southern California orchard country, with a perfect climate, vast areas of parkland all around and stunning Pacific beaches only minutes away, this close-knit community of 40,000 is less than 40 miles from the entertainment capital of the world- Los Angeles. Among the most affluent populations in California, Newbury Park’s residents enjoy one of the highest-rated school systems and lowest crime rates in California, and a booming economy offering virtually unlimited business and employment possibilities. Who wouldn’t want a home in Newbury Park?

Location

Newbury Park is located in Ventura County, roughly mid-way between the cities of Thousand Oaks and Camarillo

Geography/Terrain

Situated amidst beautiful citrus and other fruit-producing orchards, Newbury Park is surrounded by rolling oak-dotted Southern California hills.

Distance to 3 closest major cities

Newbury Park is about 5 miles from Camarillo, thirty-three miles from Los Angeles, and 45 miles from Santa Barbara.

Jobs

Situated right in the heart of Ventura County, with easy access to its ten cities, to Santa Barbara, and to the vast Los Angeles metropolis, Newbury Park’s highly educated residents have a very wide range of employment choices. The surrounding area is home to major companies involved in biotechnology and other high-tech industries, manufacturing, tourism, telecommunications, and military-related research and development. The nearby Port of Hueneme is the largest refrigerated fruit terminal on the West Coast and also serves as a key distribution point for imported vehicles, and the region’s largest employer, the US Navy, contributes approximately $1.2 billion to the Ventura County economy annually.

Housing

With some of the top-rated schools in the Conejo Valley and a population described as “upper class metropolitan”, Newbury Park is a most sought-after residential location. There is a good mix of homes, with single family home prices averaging from $600,000 to two million and condos from $350,000 to half a million. The community contains two major new growth residential areas: Rancho Conejo Village has been built on the site of the former Conejo Valley Airport; and a 2300 acre master-planned community, Dos Vientos Ranch, which is renowned for the natural beauty its setting and its many attractive residential features.

Parks/Sports/Recreation/Golf

Residents of Newbury Park and its surrounding area have a wonderful range of choice of outdoor recreation. The unspoiled beaches of the Pacific coast are just minutes away, and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is right on the doorstep. This stunning resource, stretching from the heights of the Santa Monica Range through beautiful desert canyons to the shores of the Pacific, is rich in native American history and boasts a huge diversity of flora and fauna. Its extensive trail system make it a mecca for hikers, cyclists and horse-riders, its famous beaches offer swimming, surfing, and sun-bathing, and there are countless areas for picnics and camping.

Located in and around the adjacent City of Camarillo, the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District is custodian of 27 parks and reserves offering a variety of recreational facilities, including swimming pools (indoor and outdoor), lighted ball fields, tennis courts, racquetball courts, a running track, children’s play equipment, picnic shelters, barbecues and much more.

Ventura County has a particularly fine public library service, and Newbury Park residents have ready access to excellent libraries in Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Westlake Village, and other nearby cities. Services offered include daily readings, English literacy courses, homework help, and much more.

With over 30 fine golf courses within as many miles of Newbury Park, all set amidst a beautiful landscape and blessed with year-round perfect weather, the city is a kind of heaven for golfers. Olivas Golf Course in Ventura City has been voted the top public golf course in the County for 4 consecutive years, and over 100,000 rounds are played there annually. The Camarillo Springs Golf Course is a challenging course whose lovely scenic setting attracts many tourists. Set amidst rolling hills it has lots of water hazards and bunkers to test the golfer’s accuracy and judgment. The picturesque Los Robles Greens Golf Course at Thousand Oaks is a popular 6,304 yard, par 70 course known for the giant oak trees that line its fairways and guard many of its undulating greens. The cool breezes afforded by its elevation at 900 feet above sea level make playing this beautiful course a delightfully relaxing experience.

Special Attractions/Events

Newbury Park’s Stagecoach Museum complex contains replicas of important buildings from the city’s history. The Tri-Village, made up of replicas of a pioneer home, a Spanish-Mexican adobe and a Chumash Ap (tule dwelling) represents the three historic eras in the Conejo Valley. The original Stagecoach Inn was built in 1876 and modified many times before it was destroyed by fire in 1970. It was rebuilt for the museum in 1980 and now appears as it did when it was first constructed. The museum also contains a remarkable replica of the Timber School, built in 1899, which was the first school in the area. Built by students of Newbury Park High School and local volunteers, the replica has been made to accurately portray a schoolroom of the period and contains many authentic artifacts and antiques.

Camarillo’s Constitution Park is the location of the popular (and free) Summer Concerts in the Park series which offers eight or nine family concerts on Saturday evenings between May and September each year. Up to 4,000 people gather on blankets and lawn chairs under the stars for these shows, which showcase many styles of music, including pop, rock ‘n roll oldies, country, bluegrass, jazz, big band and classical performances. It’s a terrific way to spend a summer evening in beautiful Camarillo.

Also in Camarillo, the Camarillo Ranch House offers a fascinating insight into the life of a wealthy landowning family in the early 20th Century. Built in 1892 and the longtime residence of Adolfo Camarillo and his family, the 4 1/2 acre ranch with its large, white Victorian Ranch House has been renovated and is preserved as a cultural, educational and event center. The Ranch includes a large red barn, a stable, and a tack room, and is open for guided tours and for events such as weddings, private tours, parties, and film shoots.

Known as the last unspoiled small town in Southern California, Fillmore is well worth the drive through the lovely citrus groves of the Heritage Valley. A charming pre-World War II town that has been used as the location of countless Hollywood movies, it is the home of the famous Fillmore and Western historical trains. Many of the trains’ journeys have themes based on vintage Hollywood movies, and they depart from Fillmore’s Historic Downtown District on leisurely scenic trips through the picturesque Santa Clara River Valley.

Interesting Facts/Historic Buildings and Places

Ventura County is fortunate to have retained a number of very old adobe buildings from its early days. Lovely buildings in their time, these venerable structures are a living link to the area’s pioneering past. Some are now ruins, but a few have been maintained and restored and now serve as museums, hotels, or private homes. One of them, the Lopez Adobe near Ojai, is the oldest continuously inhabited adobe in Ventura County. Built in 1830 to house soldiers protecting the surrounding country from hostile Indians, it remained in the family of its original builder for almost a century. The oldest remaining, the Rancho Simi Adobe in Simi Valley, is over 200 years old and was partially destroyed by fire during an Indian raid in 1820. Later restored, it is now open for guided tours on weekends.

Some of Newbury Park’s main residential areas have been developed on the sites of two now largely forgotten airports which themselves had interesting connections with movie and television history. One, the Conejo Valley airport was opened in the late 1940’s and by the mid 50’s had been abandoned to development, eventually being built over with houses, Highway 101, and the Los Robles Golf Course. At least one episode of the popular TV series Francis the Talking Mule was filmed there in the early 50’s.

The second airport, Rancho Conejo, was built in 1960 to sustain aerospace manufacturing and research operations by Northrop, whose nearby newly-built local facility was engaged in work related to space flight. News releases at the time proclaimed that “the airport was specifically designed to meet the needs of flying executives, many of whom pilot their own planes”, but within five years it had been closed, largely it seems because the land was more valuable for housing development. Rancho Conejo airport is now remembered mostly as the location for the 1963 movie “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”, starring Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett.

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