Hyperlocal Camarillo Podcast

Hot spots and best-kept-secrets in and around Camarillo, California, a bedroom community north of LA. Listen for interviews with a wide range of characters from Old Timers, Blue Hairs and Blue Beards to local business owners. Keep in mind, the local history isn’t all roses and sunshine; we have an assortment of True Crime stories that’ll captivate you. New episodes each week st

In 1861, while the Civil War raged in the east, a monumental flood transformed California from a livestock economy into the world’s fifth largest supplier of food. Generational floods turned cattle ranchers into prairie farmers as a salty barren desert becomes an agricultural mecca. We detail these chains of events while expanding on the role the Oxnard Plain played into all of t

Camarillo was incorporated as a city in 1964, but long before that, it was known as Rancho Calleguas, a 10,000-acre desert Adolfo Camarillo transformed into an agricultural mecca. But the rancho also played a crucial role connecting railroad and freeway transportation between Northern and Southern California, forever establishing direct transportation with the commercial world. You

Before his death in August of 1905, Fredrick Rindge, the Land Baron of Malibu asked his wife, May Rindge, to make a solemn promise: Preserve the natural beauty of their “Sunset-Land” ranch and resist all efforts by others to invade their domain. May Rindge will spend the next three decades trying to keep that promise. She'll fight the Southern Pacific, State of California, and

In Part II, May Rindge continues the solemn promise she made to her late husband, Frederick Rindge, to resist all efforts by others to invade their domain, Rancho Topanga Malibu. Some of her efforts went to extremes. After losing hundreds of heads of livestock, she hired armed guards and instructed them to shoot any trespassers. Gun fights, Legal hand-to-hand guerrilla warfare, ove

As early as 1905, Juan Camarillo Jr. dreamed of constructing a brand-new Catholic chapel in the village of Camarillo. Learn about Juan’s inspired trip to the Vatican and how he originally wanted to build a windowless mausoleum with Roman columns where St. Mary Magdalen sits today. Our special guest, Sherry Reynolds, Camarillo Ranch historian, also explains the story behind St Mar

In the early hours of March 1, 1929, gunshots rattled across the Conejo Valley. A Packard Roadster rumbled toward Camarillo on what is now the 101 highway. Soon a corpse was found in a Camarillo field beside the road. His pocket contained clues detectives traced to two beautiful women and two mafia friends of the deceased. Thus, jumpstarted the first underworld trial ever held on t

In 1898, then-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt led his famous Rough Riders into battle in the Spanish-American War. One Rough Rider was Santa Barbara native and fellow Harvard alumni, Stanley Hollister. In 1900, Roosevelt became President of the United States. In 1903, he embarked on a 66 day, 14,000 mile train trip through 25 states, including California. He stopped in Ventura and toure

On March 13th, 1854, the Convention of Kanagawa was signed, kickstarting US-Japanese trade relations on tenuous circumstances. Many Japanese would eventually immigrate and become citizens of the United States. Japanese-Americans, like most immigrants, have faced discrimination in many ways; but none so awful as the internment camps during WWII. On December 8th, 1942, one day after