The Volcano in Ventura

On the heels of last week’s post, “The Ghosts of Garden Street,” I have the following: another old report of Santa Barbara goings-on that made it into print in the L.A. Times and that also hinges around something that could potentially draw tourists to the area. Kind of gives you an idea of what Santa Barbara’s significance was to the rest of California. Not sure that’s changed, really.

This article comes from the September 29, 1883, issue and details an apparent feud between the editor of the Santa Barbara Independent and the ownership of a volcano that apparently resided in Ventura County at the time.

For context’s sake, the immediately following article was about a murder-suicide in New Jerusalem, a Ventura County settlement that apparently doesn’t exist anymore. As for the volcano, I don’t have a clue where it might be. A Google search turned up little of interest, save for a relatively recent article in the Ventura County Star about a small patch of land in Little Sespe Canyon, near Fillmore, that had been mysteriously smoldering for a while and may still be doing so. I feel like if it was doing so back in 1883 and making people worry back then that they were neighbors with a nascent volcano, it should be better-known today. Or it should be, you know, a fucking volcano. Why the Independent editor would be getting the county lines redrawn to include Fillmore is completely beyond me.