Bakersfield & Ventura Railway: A Brief History

Fillmore, about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles, may seem an unlikely hotbed of transportation activity, but that had never stopped the schemers. The town was a stop on the original Southern Pacific mainline from L.A. to San Francisco, but was bypassed when SP opened its Chatsworth tunnel in 1903, completing a new and shorter route. The line through Fillmore remained in service as a secondary line for many years, but it must have stung the locals to know they were, so to speak, out of the mainstream. The idea of a short line through the mountains surfaced even before the Chatsworth line opened. The Bakersfield & Ventura was chartered, survey work done, and some track eventually laid down near the coast, but the company ran out of funds and the Sespe Creek line was eventually forgotten. According to an article by Joseph Maguire in the Ventura County Historical Society Quarterly, John W. Burson and H.M. Russell were granted a charter by the county of Ventura in January 1902 to build a railroad from the “Brownstone Spur” east of Fillmore, north along Sespe Ave (now Grand Ave.) to Devil’s Gate, then continuing north via Sespe Hot Springs, Mutah and Lockwood Valleys and the Cuyama Valley. The railroad was supposed to be electric, which was said to be more suitable for the steep grades and sharp curves required to cross the mountains of northern Ventura County.

Approximate route of the B&V through northern Ventura County 

 Within a few months, the B&V acquired franchises that had been issued a few years earlier to the Santa Clara Valley Electric Railway, granting the SCVER the right to build an electric railway on county roads and private rights of way from the outskirts of Ventura, to Santa Paula and beyond, with branches to Hueneme and Saticoy. At least in theory, that gave the B&V access to a connection with the new Southern Pacific mainline (rather than just to what was soon to become the Santa Paula/Fillmore branch); better still, it could build to the small but promising harbor at Hueneme. By mid-1902, Gervase Purcell, formerly of Great Northern and Japanese National Railways, was hired as chief engineer. Purcell surveyed the route and was quoted in the newspapers as saying that the maximum grade of the line would not exceed 3 percent. 

Eben Smith became president in 1903. Smith had solid credentials as a railroad man: He had built the Florence & Cripple Creek in Colorado. Under Smith, construction finally began, though not on the challenging route through Devil's Gate. Instead, after some delays in obtaining rail and other materials, the first tracks were spiked down in Oxnard, where construction was easier and there was more potential for quick revenue.  A 1991 Los Angeles Times article on the Ventura County Railway said: “The first [B&V] rail line, paralleling the American Sugar Beet Co.'s drainage ditch from Oxnard to the ocean, was completed at 8:30 a.m. on July 4, 1905. The last spike was driven just in time for the train to take city residents on an inaugural Independence Day run to a feast at barbecue pits dug on the beach.”

The B&V's first motive power was a couple of locomotives leased from the SP. In 1905, the line purchased a gasoline-powered speeder from the Sheffield Motor Car Company, numbered 001. Later came a gas-powered, trolley-style passenger car, also from Sheffield, numbered 002.

Under Smith the B&V obtained additional rights of way south via “Trifuno” (the Thousand Oaks area?) and Calabasas Pass to the San Fernando Valley, and north through the San Joaquin Valley to Santa Clara Valley and as far as Santa Cruz. Reports in L.A. papers at about the same time said that the Huntington interests (the Pacific Electric Railway) were planning to build an electric railroad through Ventura to Santa Barbara, with “a branch to Bakersfield.” There was speculation that the B&V interests were talking to Huntington; Joseph Maguire, in his article in the Ventura County Historical Society Quarterly, finds evidence that Smith was a trusted friend of Henry Huntington. Just to further stir the pot, the Southern Pacific announced in early 1904 that it would extend its Nordoff (Ojai) branch “over the Matilija to Bakersfield.” This would presumably follow approximately the route of the modern Highway 33. If so, it would be a challenging route for a railroad, even steeper and more curvy than the B&V’s Sespe route. This may have been no more than a red herring to discourage potential investors in what could become a rival line. Just when things were going well (but still with no track built anywhere near Fillmore, much less north into the Sespe country) Eben Smith died suddenly. Smith's heirs quickly sued the railroad for money he had been owed, forcing the line into foreclosure. The Smith estate ended up buying the railroad for $175,000. Maguire speculates that the Smith estate was acting on behalf of Huntington, who may have been worried that rival railroad companies might buy the B&V to obtain a gateway into Los Angeles. 

Construction continued on lines in Oxnard and Hueneme, where sugar beets provided steady traffic, and the American Sugar Beet Company was the railroad's leading customer. There was a final, brief flurry of talk about extending the line in 1911, but shortly after that all assets were transferred to Ventura County Railway, a subsidiary of American Sugar Beet Co. The Times article says: In 1911, the cash-pinched railway became the property of the Oxnard brothers, Robert and Henry, who had no interest in out-of-town rights of way or becoming railroad barons. They used their acquisition to fuel the growth of their American Sugar Beet Co., building a network of rail spurs from their sugar-processing plant to the Oxnard Plain's most productive beet fields. When the automobile became popular, passenger service fell off and was finally stopped on New Year's Eve, 1926. The railway continued as an indentured servant to the beet trade until the founding of the Hueneme port in 1939. It was World War II that saw it flourish into one of the most profitable small railroads in the nation. After the U.S. Navy commandeered the port, an estimated 150 carloads of construction supplies, weaponry, soldiers and sailors were hauled each day over its tracks for four years. 

The Ventura County Railway continues to operate today, primarily shuttling civilian cargo traffic between the Port of Hueneme and the Union Pacific (former SP) interchange in Oxnard. Here's a link to their web site: https://www.gwrr.com/vcrr/. B&V engine #1, 2-6-0 built by Pittsburgh Locomotive Works in 1906, is pictured in Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg’s Mixed Train Daily. The photo is reproduced at the top of this blog. By then No. 1 was serving the B&V's successor line, the Ventura County Railway. The photo is attributed to H.M. Kelso but no date is given. The engine is shown pulling a Harriman-style passenger car, which suggests that the photo may have been taken before passenger service ended it 1926. 

Sources: 

Beebe, Lucius and C. M. Clegg, Jr. Mixed Train Daily. Berkeley, California: Howell-North, 1961

Maguire, Joseph F. “Ventura County Railway.” Ventura County Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 6. No. 3, May 1961 Pummer, Christopher. 

“Nearing 90 and Still Working: Ventura County Railway, `Integrally Linked' to Oxnard's History, Is Remnant of Grandiose Plan.” Los Angeles Times, Ventura County Edition, Los Angeles, Calif.: Nov 10, 1991., pg. 1