page_title: Newbury Park, California
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Newbury Park, California / History / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Conejo Hotel (Grand Union Hotel) in the 1880s.
context_page_description: Newbury Park is a town located mostly within the western Thousand Oaks city limits in Ventura County, California, United States. It makes up all of ZIP code 91320, and is within area code 805. Lying within the Conejo Valley in the northwestern part of the Greater Los Angeles Area, Newbury Park abuts the Santa Monica Mountains. It is approximately 35 miles from Downtown Los Angeles and less than 7 mi from the Los Angeles County border in Westlake Village. The closest coastal city is Malibu, 22 mi from Newbury Park, which may be reached through winding roads or hiking trails crossing the Santa Monica Mountains. About 28,000 residents of Thousand Oaks reside in Newbury Park. Newbury Park makes up around 40 percent of Thousand Oaks' total land area.
  Newbury Park is a neighborhood of Thousand Oaks which has numerous times ranked among the safest communities in the United States.
context_section_description: When the Europeans first arrived in the Conejo Valley, they pressed plow to furrow and fields to barley and wheat. 
  Newbury Park is named after its founder, Egbert Starr Newbury, who owned thousands of acres of land in the Conejo Valley and later became the first postmaster. E.S. Newbury, Howard Mills, and John Edwards were among the first to buy former Rancho El Conejo land in the early 1870s. El Rancho Conejo was an area which today encompasses most of the Conejo Valley and was named for its many rabbits. Its name derives from a Spanish land grant in California, encouraged by the Spanish- and Mexican governments.
  Newbury and his wife Fannie moved to California from Michigan of health reasons in 1871. He later became the first postmaster in the Conejo Valley in 1875. The post office was near their house which was located at the current location of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. E.S. Newbury purchased 2,200 acres of land in 1874, which stretched from today's old town Thousand Oaks and into Hidden Valley in southern Newbury Park. 
  In the 1870s, Egbert S. Newbury and his wife Fannie moved full-time to their ranch in Conejo Valley which they named "Newbury Park" because the land looked so much like a park community. It consisted of his house, barn, and a guest house for visitors to "enjoy the healthful climate", according to E.S. Newbury. The area was remote and only five families lived in the Conejo Valley at the time, all on large ranch lands. The ranches were miles apart and there were no grocery stores, medical facilities, schools, or churches in the valley. Newbury had acres of wheat and owned thousands of sheep. The weather had a great impact on his health, and he wrote to his sister Kittie in Michigan on November 23, 1874:
  «take wings and come to Conejo and enjoy our warm bright days all winter… be outdoors instead of confined indoors… I am out all the time and our drives now are just lovely with the country all turning green. The birds stay around our house in flocks all the time… Our roads to the ranch are splendid and they lie through beautiful canyons and large groves of live and white oak and sycamore, then into an open valley with slopes and surrounding hills covered with evergreen oaks…».
  As a result of the increasing interest in the developing Conejo Valley, Newbury functioned as a public relations representative for the Conejo Valley. On December 25, 1875, E.S. Newbury wrote in the largest newspaper in Ventura County at the time, the Ventura Signal, the following words about Newbury Park:
  «Next to Ojai and Santa Ana ranchos, the Conejo mountain valley has the best reputation as a health resort. It is well fifteen miles from Port Hueneme. The soil is immensely fertile, producing large crops of wheat and other grain…».
  Before Newbury Park existed, the Grand Union Hotel provided a stopover for travelers that dates back to 1876. The hotel was operated as a health- and pleasure resort, and provided a rest stop for stagecoach passengers and a gathering place for residents in Newbury Park.
  The Conejo Valley pioneers were living in rugged individualism, where travelers had to make their journey over the Conejo Grade or Norwegian Grade to reach Camarillo where they could buy groceries. Newbury Park was an older settlement than Thousand Oaks, where people had settled wedged between Borchard lands on the south and Friedrich land on the north. The residents of the Conejo Valley had to travel to Oxnard for high school, burials or for marriages. 
  As inhabitants of the valley had to travel to San Buenaventura (Ventura, CA) to get their mail, E.S. Newbury took the initiative to establish a local post office and applied to Washington, D.C. On July 16, 1875, the Newbury Park Post Office was established with E.S. Newbury as its first postmaster.
  The Conejo School District was established in March 1877. At the time, the population was 126 in the Conejo Valley. E.S. Newbury and other residents of the Conejo Valley were unprepared for the 1876–78 drought. There were only six inches of rain in 30 months. The drought devastate
caption: Conejo Hotel at Timberville, 1880s.
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