So why do the old guys get frustrated? Post 2

Taking this a step further into the past before the beach in Ventura was developed into what it is now… and actually the City isn’t finished developing the beach area yet, there is more to come…

I moved to Ventura in 1967 and before then when I’d come to Ventura to surf you could surf anywhere from “C” street to the Ventura river mouth just like today and drive into the whole area but it was much different.

There was “C” street up to the point… basically Figaroa st. and then Stables and Pipe, or the Fair Grounds. Stables, where what is sometimes called mid point or middles now was inside the Fair area, as well, so was Pipe. The Fair has stables now that you can see if you drive to the end of the street between the $2 lot and the Fair Grounds. At the end of the street you can see the Fair stables off to your right inside the grounds. Well, those stables use to be right on the beach where the $2 parking lot is now. From about where the guard or ticket shack is and most of the way up to Pipe.

The Fair grounds area was open to visitors during the day so surfers would drive into the horse stables area park in front of them for free and access the surf by walking right through the stables. Almost needless to say but that spot was called Stables. Some still call it that.

You could also drive up a little further to Pipe. There were more sand dunes up there then too, you had to park behind them and then walk over them to get to the surf. Where you now park to surf Pipe was all sand dunes. What’s left of the dunes that were paved over are protected… sort of, by the log fences.

There was also a large pipe that had to be at least three feet in diameter that dumped a lumpy dark colored slop just below the mean tide line on the back side of the reef there. When the tide was high you could only see the top portion of the pipe. But when the tide was low you could see the stuff coming out of it as it washed directly into the ocean at waters edge.

From what I was told the stuff coming out of the pipe was some kind of discharge from the oil fields up river from the beach. Water was used to extract oil from the ground and the material that came out of the pipe was a mix of water, silt and a little oil mix from the extraction process. Don’t know if that’s accurate or not… but the stuff was dumped right in the surf zone at the mouth of the Ventura river. Gave the water a grayish color and smelled a bet different than ocean water usually smells like.

That was Ventura, and that’s why the spot right below the river mouth was called Pipe… and is to this day.

D.R.

A couple 100 year old pictures of the point and Ventura Pier