General Contractor in Montalvo, CA

J. G. Hill, credited with being the founder of Montalvo, laid out plans for the town site in 1886. Some accounts indicate that the community was named after Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, the Spanish author who first described the Island of California in the 1510 novel Las Sergas de Esplandián. In 1887, the Southern Pacific Railroad built the railroad line from Los Angeles through the Santa Clara River Valley northerly through the area.

In its early days, Montalvo was served by the Washington Street railroad depot. For awhile, the depot was the terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad in Ventura County. Goods destined for Ventura and Port Hueneme were unloaded at Montalvo and taken by cart to those locations. The community also became a center for growing and processing apricots. A school was built on Grand Avenue in 1889. In the 19th century, the community had a newspaper called the Montalvo Courier or the Evening Monitor. It was a thriving community in the late 19th century. In the late 1880s, the University of Southern California planned to establish a satellite campus, to be known as the “Collegiate Institute”, on a grassy knoll in Montalvo. According to one account: “There was a splendid hotel beside the large depot. The town boasted a daily newspaper, a Chinese laundry, a general store and post office that was the center of life along the river.” Montalvo promoters touted the community as “the Pasadena of Ventura County.”

In the early 1900s, after railroad service was extended to Oxnard, most of the homes in Montalvo were physically relocated across the Santa Clara River to Oxnard. Oxnard became a boom town, and home mover John Brakey developed a thriving business loading homes on rollers and moving them across the dry river bed from Montalvo to Oxnard. During this time, Montalvo also lost its newspaper and printing press. By the 1920s, most of Montalvo’s population had relocated elsewhere.