With the establishment of a new post office, Bard officially changed the spelling of the town’s name from “Wynema” back to its Spanish form, “Hueneme.” Within the next few years, the little town of Hueneme could claim that it was the greatest grain port on the southern coast and the eastern gateway to the Santa Barbara Channel. For example, Scott Street was named after his employer and Clara Street for his future sister-in-law. He named many of the streets after friends, relatives or boyhood memories. Thomas Bard platted the nearby town in June 1872, borrowing a device from his hometown of Chambersburg by forming a diamond of the central streets. The one hundred-acre salt marsh west of the wharf was the site of the harbor itself. The marsh to the east of the wharf, known as the Hueneme Slough, would later be filled in by the materials dredged for the future harbor. Over the years, the wharf would be lengthened, ultimately extending 1,700 feet into the sea. Three large warehouses were also constructed on the shore nearby. A rail track was laid the entire length, initially accommodating a train of twenty-four cars, each capable of carrying one hundred sacks of grain. Originally 900 feet long, the wharf boasted a width of forty feet at the loading face. A drilling rig formerly used by Bard in his oil operations was brought to the site to dig an artesian well, whose purpose was to supply water for ships as well as the teams bringing shipments to the wharf. Construction of the wharf began May 23, 1871. The Point was long, rounding, low and sandy, and was the most projecting point in the sweep of the lowlands of the Santa Clara Valley. The site chosen for the new wharf, together with Anacapa Island nearly eleven miles due south, formed the eastern entrance to the Santa Barbara Channel. PN4064, MVC Library & Archives collection. Hauling grain out to ship on the Hueneme wharf. With no option other than a prolonged legal contest available, Bard and a determined group of armed supporters headed toward the occupied site, precipitating what would become known as the “Hueneme War.” Fortunately no shots were fired, and eventually an equitable agreement with the squatters allowed Bard to build his wharf while awaiting a ruling from the Secretary of the Interior, a decision which years later favored his position. About one hundred squatters had already appropriated the land at the site of the proposed wharf and had even formed a small village they called “Wynema,” an adaptation of “Hueneme,” the Spanish transcription of the original Chumash name for the area, meaning “resting place.” They contended that the survey of the land grant was incorrect and accordingly, they had settled on what they claimed to be free, open land. To Captain Greenwell’s experienced eye, this was an ideal location for the construction of a wharf. At this location, the sea floor dropped from six fathoms (11 meters) near the shoreline, to ninety fathoms within a few hundred yards, and then suddenly, as though arriving at a sheer precipice, it dropped to the amazing depth of two hundred fathoms (365 meters). Geodetic Survey, Bard learned of a submarine canyon just east of Point Hueneme. On a two-day exploration of the coastline with friend Captain W.E. 1Īs early as 1867, Bard envisioned a wharf at Point Hueneme to serve the farmlands and growing communities in the area. This vast acreage encompassed most of what would later become Oxnard and all of Port Hueneme, and would eventually become the location of the Bard family home. As Scott’s land agent, Bard took control of all of Scott’s Southern California holdings, including the 32,100-acre Rancho Rio de Santa Clara o La Colonia, purchased the year before his arrival. From this new role he would become a pioneer oil and land developer, rancher, entrepreneur, the founding president of Union Oil Company and eventually a United States senator.īard arrived in Santa Barbara aboard the side-wheel steamer Senator in January 1865, and soon began drilling at a site in the upper Ojai, bringing in the first freeflowing oil well in the state of California. Bard was charged with the responsibility of buying land and drilling for oil in unproven terrain. Fresh from his encounter with war, Bard was made an agent for his employer, the oil and railroad magnate and Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. An invading Confederate army had torched his hometown of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, including his mother’s house, and as an employee of the Cumberland Valley Railway he had distinguished himself during a harrowing experience behind enemy lines during the Battle of Antietam in 1862. A gangling young man of twenty-three, Bard cultivated a sweeping mustache to disguise his youth, but had matured well beyond his years during the havoc of the Civil War. The early history of Ventura County, and particularly Port Hueneme, was indelibly influenced by the arrival of Thomas R.
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