Foundation wants to honor Camarillo with freeway renaming
Local officials will travel to capital
Daniel Wolowicz camarillo@theacorn.com

A group of hometown historians hope to remind motorists on the 101 Freeway of the man whose donation more than 70 years ago allowed the much-used arterial to make its way down the Conejo Grade and across Pleasant Valley.

Members of the Camarillo Ranch Foundation will join Assemblymember Audra Strickland (R-Westlake Village) and Camarillo Mayor Charlotte Craven on Monday in Sacramento to present a resolution before the assembly's transportation committee to name a portion of the 101 Freeway as the Adolfo Camarillo Memorial Highway.

The Camarillo City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to back the resolution, and both the Ventura County Transportation Commission and the Ventura County Board of Supervisors have also offered their support of the freeway renaming.

"His family had a huge effect on this area," Councilmember Mike Morgan said. "He put in the chapel at St. Mary Magdalen, he donated land for (St. John's) Seminary and his family donated land for the high school."

Strickland, who authored the March 12 resolution, said she was approached by Bill Little, a member of the foundation's board of directors, with the proposal to rename a sixmile stretch of the freeway from the top of the Conejo Grade to Lewis Road in Camarillo.

"(Adolfo Camarillo) really has made an incredible contribution to this state, and I think it's incredibly appropriate for the Legislature to name a portion of Highway 101 after him," Strickland said.

"It commemorates a family that has done a lot for not only Ventura County, but the state as well," said Little, Camarillo's former city manager. He said the idea was born out of a ranch foundation's public relations committee.

Strickland said the resolution will have to pass through both the Assembly and the State Senate before August to reach the governor's desk for final approval.

The resolution stipulates that the sign would be paid for with donations, not state money.

In 1937, Camarillo- who took over his family's 10,000-acre ranch at the age of 16 in 1880- granted the state a ribbon of land across his property to be used for Highway Route 101. At the time, the highway was a rural two-lane roadway that would eventually stretch along the West Coast between Mexico and Canada.

Camarillo's ranch extended from the Conejo Grade to what is now the Union Pacific Railroad tracks just east of Old Town Camarillo.

Additional land grants made by Camarillo included the land used by the Southern Pacific Railroad to lay tracks through Pleasant Valley and the donation of 50 acres to the school district for Adolfo Camarillo High School.

Camarillo not only served on the Board of Supervisors from 1907 to 1915, but he was a member of the Pleasant Valley School District Board of Trustees for 56 years.

His Victorian style home, built in 1892, was named a California Point of Historical Interest in 2005.