Ventura County Landmark No. 99: Dos Vientos Ranch Buildings (aka Lewis/Clark Ranch)

These two large livestock barns, built in the 1930s, historically served the Dos Vientos Ranch along Potrero Road in Newbury Park. The ranch comprised a historical portion of the 30,593-acre Rancho Guadalasca Mexican land grant made to Isabel Yorba in 1836.

Joseph Lewis, a business partner of Adolfo Camarillo, farmed approximately 8,000 acres of Dos Vientos Ranch. He established the lima bean industry in Ventura County and thus was partially responsible for the county being called the lima bean capital of the world. A later owner of the ranch, horse lover Malcolm Clark, was at one time Henry Ford’s tool and die maker and raised Tennessee walking horses, Percheron draft horses and Clydesdales at the property (Bustillo, 1996).

The historic Dos Vientos Ranch is located within the area which the National Park Service developed as the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail, commemorating Captain Anza’s trip from Mexico which culminated in the founding of Pueblo of Yerba Buena in San Francisco.

The livestock barns were demolished in 1996 as part of the Dos Vientos master-planned residential community constructed in Newbury Park. The barns were disassembled and marked piece by piece to enable their relocation and reconstruction (Terada, 1996). A final location and future use are still to be determined for the wood pieces, currently stored at the Rancho Portrero open space area. However, a portion of the wood was used to construct the blacksmith shop at Newbury Park’s Stagecoach Inn Museum, while another portion was used to build the podium for the Conejo Recreation and Park District boardroom (Megli-Thuna, 2018).