Ventura Pierpont and Ventura Keys Beach Communities

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Pierpont Bay: A Stormy and Storied History

Ventura County & Coast Reporter June 30, 1988

By Ken McAlpine

It began as sand and marsh, 550 acres of it to be precise. Walter Hoffman takes some pride in this.

Hoffman is reminiscing. He sits in his office off the corner of Seaward Avenue and Pierpont Boulevard, 100 feet away from a former airstrip. Two blocks away sit the Ventura Keys, where on a single June Saturday 24 years ago anxious buyers stood in line to snatch up 250 homes in a single day. Stand on the front porch of Hoffman's office and look up toward the hills and you can see the Vista del Mar Bluffs, where 51 years ago, in the wee hours of a December morning, a few lucky homes were carted up a narrow switchback road while the remains of homes not so lucky banged about in a seething ocean. Peel back the blind of Hoffman's office window and you look out on that same ocean, over homes where eighty-odd years ago brothers William and Abram Hobson used simple ingenuity to turn 550 acres of sand and marsh into productive farmland. Walter Hoffman. 65, is the descendant of William Hobson.

Change has a way of blindsiding us, coming on so fast that we don't even see it coming. History, as the record of that Change, can be equally breathtaking. When William and Abram Hobson bought themselves 550 acres of marsh and sand sometime around 1900, most of their fellow farmers probably thought they were fools. Eighty odd years later the Hobson brothers' white elephant is home to Ventura Harbor and some of the priciest real estate in the county. The Hobsons, however. didn't buy the land as a real estate investment. Their motives, points out ancestor Hoffman, were much simpler: "when you don't have much money, you figure out a lot of ways of doing things"

As with most clever innovations. the Hobson's was simple. As farmers they were well aware of the habits of nature. They watched heavy winter rains wash soil from the fields and send it downstream to spill into the ocean. The Hobson brothers gave it some thought, then bought 550 acres of beachfront land hemmed in by the Santa Clara River, San Pedro Street, the Vista del Mar Bluffs and the Pacific Ocean. They built a weir, a portable flood gate. and one winter plumped it down in the middle of the Arundell Barranca. When the rains came down and the barranca filled with muddy brown water, the Hobson's weir deflected the water out over their own land. After several winters, the Hobson brothers found themselves wallowing in rich topsoil: six feet of it at the barranca's edge, tapering down to six inches at the flood waters' far reaches. Right about where Walter Hoffman's office sits right now. "The soil was practically free other than the labor of moving the flood gate," smiles Hoffman, pushing back from his desk. "People hadn't learned about soil conservation back then."

Pretty canny," admits Yetive Hendricks. Hendricks, a 30-year resident of Pierpont Beach has made a hobby of the Pierpont Bay area and its history. A docent for the Ventura County Historical Museum, she has access to a repository of Pierpont historical memorabilia, most of which she put together herself. Newspaper clippings recall the ravages of winter storms, old photographs freeze images of days long past.

Pierpont Bay's is a colorful and tempestuous history, complete with skeletons in the closet Witness a restriction included in the 1925 covenant establishing the Pierpont Bay subdivision: "No part of said property shall be sold, conveyed, rented or leased in whole or in part to any persons of African or Asiatic descent or to any person not of the white or Caucasian race." In atypical 1920's open mindedness the restriction went on to exempt "domestic servants, chauffeurs or gardeners of the residents."

For a long time, no one of any origin was particularly interested. When the Hobson brothers first bought the land. local farmers scratched their heads. When their experiment converted 475 acres into productive farmland local heads bobbed in approval, but no one saw any reason to settle there. In 1928 a forward thinking Frank Meline bought a mile long stretch of beach between the Hobson brothers property and the ocean. Meline, equal parts promoter and developer, envisioned a resort casino complete with bath house, swimming pool and dance hall. As soon as he purchased the land, he subdivided the lots and put them up for sale for a then pricey $2900 a lot. Up went the Pierpont Pleasure Pier, a brightly colored boardwalk and an oceanfront road appropriately dubbed Shore/Ocean Drive. Hoping to lure investors, on labor Day 1929 Meline buried $100 worth of gold in the sand off the end Seaward Avenue. Old photographs show beaches crowded with treasure hunters, some 25,000 in all. "Two months later the Stock Market crashed. Meline's beachfront lots went from $2900 to $10. Eight years later the remainder of Meline's investment would be erased by an angry ocean: blasting Shore Drive to pieces, toppling the Pierpont Pier, tearing up the boardwalk and churning it all together in a bouillabaisse of tinder and rubble. No new homes would be built in the Pierpont Bay area for the next 17 years.

Looking at Pierpont Bay today it is hard to believe almost all the development took place in less than 35 years. Sand dunes and farmland were swallowed up in less time than it takes to reach mid-life crisis. Beachfront lots, once available for a pittance. now go for exorbitant prices. Thirty years ago, Pierpont Bay was much, much different.

"For many years Pierpont was really an undiscovered area"' says Helen Yunker, now a Pierpont based realtor. "A lot of people didn't even know we had a beach."

The Pierpont Beach Yunker moved to in l958 was a far cry from what exists today. Real estate is a good measuring stick In 1958 Yunker bought a home on Weymouth Lane five houses back from the beach for $9,600. According to Yunker, at that time any house in the Pierpont area, beachfront included, could be had for $11,500. Yunker recalls a two lot package, a beachfront lot and one adjacent to it, up for sale for $10,000. Yunker smiles. "We thought that was a lot of money for a little bit of sand."

Thirty year resident Yetive Hendricks relates a similar should-have-been-here-yesterday anecdote. She and her husband bought their Camden lane home in 1958 for $10,350. When they approached a banker for a loan he warned them not to live on the beach, saying no bank would lend any money to people trying to buy at the beach. The Hendricks paid cash for a home Hendricks says she wouldn't put on the market for less than $200,000 today. There is, of course, some satisfaction in investments such as these.

"We didn't think we were pouring money down a rat hole," says Hendricks, "but who would ever dream that this could happen?"

Like most economic matters, real estate's value depends on supply and demand. Prices were low when Yunker and Hendricks were buying for the simple reason few people wanted to live in the Pierpont area. Pierpont, through the 1950's and into the 1960's was not exactly the crown Jewel of the Ventura Coast. Yunker is more succinct.

"It looked like a junkyard," she states.

Old mattresses, broken furniture and other discards were dumped over back fences into abandoned courtyards. The median strip on Pierpont Boulevard was a repository for abandoned cars. Without access to sewage facilities, residents had private septic tanks which, due to a high water table, backed up on a regular basis. Improvements that did take place. says Yunker, were "mostly grass roots things" taken on by residents because the city gave the area little thought.

"The city almost used to consider this a slum area'" says Yunker.

That would soon change. For almost 60 years, with the exception of small parcels here and there, the Hobson brothers' property remained intact. The early sixties marked the beginning of a building boom along Pierpont Boulevard and adjoining streets. According to Walter Hoffman, most of the Homes, small and simple, were built by small concerns "where the boss was probably the carpenter.

Big changes were also underfoot at the edge of the Pierpont development. In the early sixties. Hoffman sold two large parcels land; one to the Port District for the proposed Ventura Harbor and one to Pacesetter Homes for the new Ventura Key's marina and housing development.

The decision to build the Ventura Keys marked the beginning of the end for two eras. The decision put an end to farmland which at the time was producing more lettuce per acre than any other land in Ventura County. It also marked the end of a small airstrip located for almost 50 years on the site where the Marina Village shopping complex and Safeway stand today. During World War I the Hobson brothers set aside a piece of marginal farmland to provide an airstrip for local pilots. Hoffman, who as a boy wandered around the airstrip admiring planes and pilots, later expanded the airstrip to include a 2,250 foot airstrip and hanger.

The idea for the Ventura Keys Development, homes backed by an inland waterway, evolved from an earlier project Hoffman had been involved with. Located at the fringes of the San Francisco Bay. Paradise Key was a landfill Development. With the Ventura Keys project, the process was reversed - Pacesetter Homes digging out waterways from the Hobson brothers’ farmland. The San Francisco project had sold well and Hoffman admits he saw plenty of potential in the Ventura Keys development. The first 250 homes sold in one day. Was Hoffman surprised?

"Hell yes." he says. "It took two years to sell Paradise Key. We had a feeling for the market but we didn't expect that."

While Pacesetter Homes put up the Keys and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dug out Ventura Harbor, the state of California was also doing its inadvertent part to put the Pierpont area on the map. In 1960 the state began building the Ventura freeway, selecting a route that ran right though the Hobson brothers' Pierpont Bay parcel. Realtor Yunker contends that Ventura city officials, who had a say in selecting the freeway's route, chose to run it through Pierpont because, says Yunker, "it would cover up some of the slum". Instead of sweeping it under the carpet, the freeway exposed Pierpont for all to see. Before the freeway was built people moved north and south through Ventura via Main Street or Thompson Boulevard. bypassing Pierpont Beach entirely.

Now shooting along the coast' out-of-town commuters got a close look at what they had been missing. Many began to stop. Some began to buy.

If there has been one constant in the history of Pierpont, it has been the ocean. The Hobson brothers robbed it of topsoil, establishing themselves as innovators and, eventually, wealthy men. Frank Meline, developer with grand plans, saw those plans reduced to splinters by the December 1937 storm. In January 1962, with the Pierpont area beginning to grow, the ever active Yunker appeared before city council to ask for some means of protection against Pacific storms. Council, recalls Yunker, "pooh, poohed" the idea. The next day a large storm slammed into Pierpont Bay. scouring out sand, dragging away seawalls and flooding streets. Trucks and bulldozers were brought in and residents helped prisoners from the county jail stack sandbags at the street ends. Seabees from neighboring Port Hueneme trucked in huge pontoons, dropping them on the beach to give the ocean something else to pound against.

"It looked like a battleground," says Yunker, whose home served as a disaster center for the Red Cross. "It was terrible. It was everything we predicted."

A year and a half later the Army Corps of Engineers finished the first three of a series of protective groins that would later line the Pierpont Beaches.

With the Keys springing up, the harbor going in and the Pierpont Beach area growing, city officials began to take a closer look at Pierpont. When it was originally zoned, the Hobson brothers' parcel was split between the county and the city with the dividing line running down what is now Bangor Lane. When Ventura city officials expressed an interest in annexing all of Pierpont, it was decided to leave the decision up to Pierpont residents. Yunker, president of the Pierpont Bay Association at the time, lobbied fiercely against annexation. Yunker's Pierpont Boulevard home fell on the county side of the dividing line. County residents paid 1555 in taxes and Yunker saw no benefit in annexation. What followed was a real lesson in democracy. Twice the issue came up for a vote and twice it was defeated - once by a tie and once by one vote. In fact, says Yunker, the issue may have been decided by who slept where. At the time, the county dividing line ran right through several houses on Bangor Lane. It was decided that residency would be determined by which side of the line the bedroom fell in. Yunker spent some time convincing one county bedroom resident to vote against annexation and he eventually did - an important vote in an election decided by one vote.

"Something that should go down in the Guiness Book of World records," says Yunker of the two close decisions

"Don't let anybody ever tell you your vote doesn't count," clucks Hendricks. who was also involved in the debate.

Yunker says the Pierpont Bay Association opposed the annexation because the city was offering county residents nothing but higher taxes. For several years members of the Pierpont Bay Association had been lobbying the city for improvements. Private septic systems attached to each home were rotting, streets were falling into disrepair, water lines and underground utilities were sorely needed. When city officials agreed to make improvements if the remainder of the Pierpont neighborhood came across the county line, residents voted yes. With annexation came the Pierpont Improvement District Which, says Yunker, brought the Pierpont Beach area into its own.

"That was the turning point," says Yunker. "Without the Improvement District you would have had nothing down here."

Hendricks, who initially opposed the improvement district ("It got a little heated." she admits with a sly smile), agrees.

"It was the turning point for the beach. People started to clean up. They started to paint their houses. Sewer lines went in. She (Yunker) won and she did a lot of good." says Hendricks.

That however, may have marked the last time Pierpont residents collectively welcomed development, With the improvements Pierpont residents suddenly found themselves in an unusual position. They were living in a place that was desirable. Hotel developers also began to see the Pierpont area in the same light and a number of hotel projects began appearing before the city planning board. In April 1985, somewhat surprised Pierpont residents helped turn back a proposed 182 room hotel at the corner of Seaward Avenue and Harbor Boulevard. However. this victory followed on the heels of a sound defeat when Ventura city council voted unanimously to approve the Sheraton Hotel on the corner of Harbor and San Pedro Street.

Recent developments have stirred up less controversy'. The 24 room, three story Inn on the Beach at the end of Seaward Avenue went up with little protest, built on land owned by Helen Yunker. Yunker sees the Pierpont neighborhood changing; more homeowners, more family oriented. With no cause to keep it going, the Pierpont Bay Association quietly dissolved. Yunker attends to real estate concerns. Less than a block away Hoffman, descendant of it all, fields phone calls from an office where not so long ago there was nothing but a thin layer of topsoil and an idea.