Hyperlocal Camarillo Podcast David Reel & Josh McDonald

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 starting in June.

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 this. Hyperlocal Camarillo is a docu-podcast showcasing the historical places and faces behind a sleepy bedroom town 50 miles north of Los Angeles and 50 miles south of Santa Barbara. Natural disasters, cowboys, and ranchers showcase real stories in real settings that are more than just local history.

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’ll learn about these chain of events plus the Conejo Grade, the demise of the Camarillo Depot, waltzing raccoons, and Josh McDonald’s questionable years in High School.

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 the U.S. Federal Government in a series of legal and sometimes violent battles to keep any public roads or rails off the Rindge family land. The Rindge family has little-known connections to not only the Camarillo family, but the city of Camarillo itself. Jose de Arnaz, the father of Ventura, Maria Camarillo, and the Adohr Dairy Farms are all intertwined in this local history epic starring Rindge family Matriarch, Rhoda May Knight Rindge. Is she a folk hero protecting the rights of her family's property, or an evil land baroness halting the public will for her own personal gain?

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, over twenty million dollars of her own money, and one missing person are just a few in a chain of events that led to the birth of the Pacific Coast Highway between Oxnard and Santa Monica—and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. What does this have to do with Camarillo? Give a listen!

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 Mary Magdalen’s stained-glass windows—they were feared to be lost at sea during World War I.