Never30 Never 30

In 1936, Camarillo State Hospital opened at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, between the city of Camarillo and the ocean. It was a project of the Great Depression, designed to put men back to work building public institutions.

For 61 years, the hospital served people with mental illness, however that was defined at the time. At one point in the 1950s, it had more than 7,000 patients and nearly 2,000 employees, making it the largest hospital west of Chicago.

The hospital officially closed on June 30, 1997, but many buildings had been shut down long before that. Renovations soon began, and today the property is known as California State University, Channel Islands.

In 1959, a trial took place in the old Ventura County Courthouse – now Ventura City Hall – that was described at the time as bizarre, macabre and just plain weird. It drew reporters from around the world, and spectators lined up as early as 5 a.m. to try to get a seat in the courtroom.

It was the trial of Elizabeth Duncan, who was accused of hiring two men to kill her daughter-in-law, 8 months pregnant at the time. Her motive? She couldn’t bear the thought of her grown son being married, of losing him to another woman.

Ma Duncan herself ended up in the history books. She was the last woman put to death in the California gas chamber in San Quentin.

How will future generations learn about us? In this digital age, will we leave a mark or a clue as to who we were or what we thought?

In this episode, we continue our interview with Charles Johnson, who recently retired after 30 years as the director of the research library at the Museum of Ventura County. Once again, we learn how he opened up the past with just one item – in this case, a stereo view card, and don’t worry, he’ll explain what that is. And he’ll tell us about his thoughts and his fears on whether we and future generations can continue to walk through these doors to the past, given the digital age.

"The whole story was just sitting there waiting to be opened — and told."

Charles Johnson came across a lot of those stories in his 30 years as director of the research library at the Museum of Ventura County. Recently retired, he sat down for a "Never 30" podcast interview, where he shared stories of the research projects he worked on, where one clue led to another, then another, and history slowly revealed itself.

The two eucalyptus trees that stand atop a hill overlooking Ventura, California, have become a symbol of the city. There have been trees there since 1898 — sometimes two, sometimes five — but they've always stood there as Ventura icons, despite drought, fire and vandalism.
Today, one is dead and one is a sapling, but their caretakers are more determined than ever to make sure that two eucalyptus trees remain sentinels of the city.

The Backbone Trail stretches 67 miles through the Santa Monica Mountains, from Point Mugu at its westernmost end to Will Rogers State Historic Park on the outskirts of the second largest city in the United States. Along the way, it yields secrets of its past. The trail itself is a story — more than four decades in the making, finally being completed on the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.