A Brief History of Oxnard, California

The area that is now Oxnard was originally inhabited by Chumash Indians, and the first European to encounter the area was Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who claimed it for Spain in 1542. California became a U.S. state in 1850, and about the same time, the area was settled by American farmers, who cultivated barley and lima beans.

Naming
A man by the name of Henry Oxnard operated a successful sugar beet factory with his three brothers in Chino, California, and was enticed to build a two-million dollar factory on the plain inland from Port Hueneme. Shortly after the 1897 beet campaign, a new town soon emerged. Ironically, the Oxnard brothers never lived in their namesake city, and they sold both the Chino and the giant red-brick Oxnard factory in 1899 for nearly four-million dollars. The Oxnard factory operated from August 19, 1899 until October 26, 1959.

In the spring of 1898, a railroad station was built to service the plant which attracted a population of laborers and enough commerce to merit the designation of a town. Oxnard intended to name the settlement after the Greek word for "sugar", but ended up naming it after himself.