City of Fillmore

Southern California was a busy time in the late 1800’s. With the coming of the railroad, and regularly scheduled freight and passenger train service available from Los Angeles to Santa Paula in early 1887, real estate prices boomed and the pioneer spirit prevailed in little villages and settlements nestled in the sheep and cattle country of the magnificent wild mustard covered Santa Clara Valley. Advertisements in the Los Angeles Times, train excursions and barbecues all served to lure Angelinos and others to the developing area.

Our town’s formal beginnings go back to 1887 when visionary, Joseph D. McNab of the Sespe Land and Water Company convinced the Southern Pacific Railroad to establish a stop on the Fillmore site in lieu of the Cienega area site, east of the fish hatchery, Bardsdale, or the Sespe area, west of Sespe Creek. McNab was also instrumental in much of the infant town’s early activities and development, which included laying out the future city’s plans and hiring William Mullholland from Los Angeles to develop a wooden flume system, bringing essential water from upper Sespe Creek. Named in honor of Jerome A. Fillmore, a Southern Pacific General Superintendent, the town’s first street map was recorded in 1888 at the Ventura County Court House. By 1900, Fillmore boasted 150 citizens (Rand McNally Atlas). In 1958, a half century ago, the recorded population had grown to 4,725. Today, approximately 14,000 men, women and children call Fillmore home.

Growth, change and disaster have touched Fillmore through the decades. During Fillmore’s early days, businesses sprung up on either side of the railroad right-of-way near the depot on Main Street, the original main street. The first businesses, all wooden structures, included a rooming house, pool hall, general store, saloon, lumberyard, fruit stand, and barbershop, servicing the needs of rail passengers and residents alike. Dozens of other businesses including a newspaper, theatre, olive oil factory and an inn spread east down Main and along Fillmore Street. Fruit packinghouses, warehouses and corrals for cattle were located east of the depot. The railroad company owned a gravel pit, employing one hundred Chinese laborers loading cars of gravel. They lived in a tent village on the edge of town and traded with local merchants.

The Ventura Free Press applauded Fillmore’s acumen, serving the Santa Clara Valley in 1899 citing numerous service and goods businesses, two churches, grammar school, large public hall, Justice of the Peace, Constable and Deputy Sheriff, three notary publics, and an insurance and real estate agent. Other businesses included The Sespe Land and Water Co., Fillmore Irrigation Co., Sunset Telephone and Telegraph Co., Excelsior Laundry, on site representatives of Wells Fargo and Western Union Telegraph Co., and a stockyard with facilities to ship cattle.

In 1903, a devastating fire destroyed a large section of Main Street. Some proprietors quickly rebuilt with new wooden structures but others did not. Nevertheless, 1907 ushered in the modern age with a string of electric lights across the intersection of Central and Main. Entrepreneurs forged forward with major building on pepper tree lined Central Avenue in 1910. A year later, streetlights illuminated the expanding business area, increasingly constructed with brick buildings, and streets were paved in 1917.

The names of Elkins, Goodenough, Tighe and Patterson opened mercantile and service business during Fillmore’s first decades, prospered, and were passed to family members or sold. Some were still in operation in the late 1950s, along with dozens of others. Fillmore’s downtown area was still energy charged and economically vibrant. Saturdays brought crowds of shoppers buying farm equipment to cars and bikes, washing machines to toasters, clothing, jewelry, carpeting, groceries, feed and grain, and most anything one could want. Few survive today. Many old and new downtown businesses are suffering in part from changing shopping habits, uncertain economic times, rising costs, a downtown and business district in need of revitalization, and more recently, difficult access and parking from a lengthy construction project. Additional businesses have located on the Hwy. 126 corridor in recent years, and the City has plans for a new business park. Residents have suggested the restoration and rebuilding of older, blighted sites throughout the downtown area. Many of Fillmore’s lifelong and long-term residents are saddened by 21st century attitudes. They remember a kinder and gentler time when they sent the kids to the movies, shopped, and afterward “heard the latest” over ice cream sodas or coffee and pie at Jesse’s Fountain.

In the late 1800s, numerous cattle ranches dotted the hillsides and mountains. The Sespe Land and Water Company owned much of the land, and gradually sold off sizable parcels to ranchers who raised oranges and lemons after the company’s successful experiment on five acres in 1888 and C.C. Elkins’ on eight acres in 1889. Some of the original farming families who successfully helped change the landscape were the Fanslers, the Basolos, the Hasses, the Shiells and the Bartels amongst others.

Just before the turn of the century, the Ventura Free Press said that Fillmore was “a horticultural center for oranges, lemons and apricots. No finer lemons are produced in Southern California.” Besides oranges, lemons, and apricots, groves of walnuts, almonds, peaches, pears, apples, olives and plums, and acres of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, black-eyed beans, lima beans, alfalfa and barley all helped to make the sprawling ranches successful. Bee keeping and honey production were profitable as well. Apricots, because of intensive labor and their delicate nature, were replaced with oranges and walnuts. Walnut production ceased in the late 1940s after the invasion of the “walnut husk fly”. Ten years later, ranchers seeking a better financial return replaced navel orange crops with avocados and Valencia oranges.

Success of the farming industry is attributed to hard working, dedicated ranching families and an abundant migrant farm labor force that included Chinese, Japanese, Mexican and American workers. Housed in camps during harvests, Mexican workers predominated by the 1920s. The thriving industry spurred numerous packing plants that took the product post harvest and employed many people. In the early years, ranchers adhered to the inspections and decisions of the County Horticultural Commission. The Fillmore Citrus Protective District organized in 1922, building the first insectary for raising beetles to control mealy bugs. It became renowned throughout the world for its program of integrated pest management, depending on beneficial insects to control citrus pests. The cooperative disbanded several years ago as citrus production decreased in Fillmore. Local ranchers who remain in citrus production today have either joined Santa Paula based Associates Insectary, or seek other methods of pest control.

In today’s world, shrinking citrus production is the result of changing tastes, escalating costs, non-replacement of aging trees, diminishing quality and profit, and robust competition from Spain, Brazil, Peru, South Africa and Australia. Wide spread planting of row crops, avocados and land leasing to nurseries is currently replacing shrinking citrus production. Last year, strawberries ranked first in financial return, lemons ranked third, Valencia oranges ranked tenth, and navel oranges ranked last in the county. Once again, Fillmore is changing.

To be continued…..
*Research material primarily provided by the Fillmore Historical Museum.