Piru Creek

Piru ( ) is a small unincorporated historic town located in eastern Ventura County, California, in the Santa Clara River Valley near the Santa Clara River and Highway 126, about seven miles (11 km) east of Fillmore and about 13 miles (21 km) west of Interstate 5. Lake Piru, in the Los Padres National Forest, is the main recreational attraction. The population was 2,063 at the 2010 census, up from 1,196 when the 2000 census was enumerated. For statistical purposes, the United States Census Bureau has defined Piru as a census-designated place (CDP), which does not precisely correspond to the historical community.

The Piru Mansion is a Queen Anne Style home located in Piru, California.

Warring Park is a California Historical Landmark as it is the site that Portolà expedition found the Chumash people group known as the Piru Indian tribe August 11, 1769. This site is in the current town of Piru, California in Ventura County. The site became California Historical Landmark number 624 on October 31, 1957. The Site is just west of Piru Creek and north of Lake Piru.The Portolà expedition was a first Spanish voyage of exploration started in 1769 and ending in 1770. It was the first recorded European exploration of the interior of the present-day California. The leader was Gaspar de Portolà who became the governor of Las Californias. After the expedition, Spain founded Alta California. They built missions, Pueblos, and Presidio-forts. The California Historical Landmark reads: On August 11, 1769, the explorers and priests accompanying Portolá found a populous village of Piru Indians near this point. Carrying their bowstrings loose, the Indians offered necklaces of stones, in exchange for which Portolá presented them with beads.

Rancho Camulos, now known as Rancho Camulos Museum, is a ranch located in the Santa Clara River Valley 2.2 miles (3.5 km) east of Piru, California and just north of the Santa Clara River, in Ventura County, California. It was the home of Ygnacio del Valle, a Californio alcalde of the Pueblo de Los Angeles in the 19th century and later elected member of the California State Assembly. The ranch was known as the Home of Ramona because it was widely believed to have been the setting of the popular 1884 novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. The novel helped to raise awareness about the Californio lifestyle and romanticized "the mission and rancho era of California history."The 1,800-acre (7 km2) working ranch is a prime example of an early California rancho in its original rural setting. It was the source of the first commercially grown oranges in Ventura County. It is one of the few remaining citrus growers in Southern California. State Route 126 bisects the property, with most of the main buildings located south of the highway, and a few buildings on the north. The main adobe is one of the few extant Spanish Colonial buildings left in the state. Most of the other buildings are done in Mission Revival or Spanish Colonial Revival styles, both of which are derivatives of the original. Rancho Camulos is designated a National Historic Landmark, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and has also been designated as a California Historical Landmark. Many of the buildings and grounds are open to the public as a museum of this period in California history.

Buckhorn is a populated place name along State Route 126 in a rural unincorporated area of Ventura County, California, United States. Buckhorn is about 2 miles (3.2 km) outside the town of Piru but is within the eponymous census-designated place. Located in the Santa Clara River Valley, this was an early stagecoach stop and a regular eating place known for being midway between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. It was run by the Warring family who came to the county in 1869 and owned the nearby Buckhorn Ranch. Buckhorn was also a station on the initial route of the coast rail line that arrived in the valley in 1887. With the completion of the Santa Susana Tunnel in 1904, the route through Oxnard and Simi Valley became the most direct route between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The shipping of agricultural products such as citrus continued to keep this route busy for many years. The Santa Paula Branch Line no longer connects through to Santa Clarita after the rails were washed out. The junction with the main line is near the East Ventura station (Metrolink ).

Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge is located in the Topatopa Mountains of Ventura County, in southern California. It is bordered by the Los Padres National Forest and the Sespe Condor Sanctuary to the north. The 2,471-acre (10.00 km2) refuge was established in 1974 to protect the endangered California condor, its habitat, and other wildlife resources. The refuge is in rugged, mountainous terrain. Primary habitats include annual grasslands, interspersed with oak and California black walnut groves, with chaparral on the steeper slopes, natural water springs and riparian habitat, and a freshwater marsh. The California black walnut community is considered to be a unique habitat in California, and is recorded in the State Natural Heritage Database. The refuge provides habitat for more than 130 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles, including the southwestern pond turtle—a California species of special concern--black bear, bobcat, mule deer, golden eagle, and California tree frog. More than 200 plant species have also been documented on the refuge. Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge plays an integral part in the California Condor Recovery Program, providing foraging and roosting habitat for the bird. The refuge shares information about the Condor Recovery Program through an outreach program that extends to local, national and international publics. The refuge is closed to public use to protect habitat for the endangered California condor and to support ongoing efforts to reintroduce California condors to the wild. The road to the refuge runs through private lands, and the road itself is inaccessible to the general public. The U.S. Forest Service maintains two observation points in Los Padres National Forest. As of July 2014, there is a total population of 437 condors living in sites in California, Baja California and Arizona. This includes a wild population of 232 and a captive population of 205. 68 free-flying condors are managed by the US Fish & Wildlife Service in Southern California.

Happy Camp Canyon Regional Park is a 3,000-acre (1,200 ha) regional park located in the eastern foothills of Moorpark, California. The park has been run by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority since 1990.

Lost Canyons Golf Club was a public golf facility located in Simi Valley, California, USA. It has two 18-hole golf courses named Sky and Shadow. Both courses were designed by Pete Dye with consulting help from Fred Couples, and were named "Top 10 Best New Courses" by Golf Magazine (2001 Sky and 2002 Shadow). The golf club was developed by Landmark Land Co. Inc, a leading developer of golf resort and residential communities. Lost Canyons Golf Club has suffered from several natural disasters over the years because of its topography and proximity to natural dry-brush. It was the victim of a wild fire that caused the destruction of many wood bridges and floods from heavy-rains that also took out the very same bridges that had been replaced. The club survived and even flourished during this attack from Mother Nature, and while the course was under construction it re-opened with a modified 18-holes by combining both the Sky and Shadow courses from those holes that were both playable and accessible via pathway and bridge. Today, neither course is open and operational. Lost Canyons LLC has filed a planned "conversion" proposal to replace one course with up to 364 upscale homes and turn the other course into a members-only private course.[1] This continues a recent trend among developers who have converted public courses into private development including Aliso Viejo Golf Club and Cypress Golf Club in California and the proposed Royal Links Golf Club in Nevada.

Big Sky Ranch is a movie ranch in Simi Valley, California, that is used for the filming of Western television series and motion pictures, among other projects. The Ventura County Cultural Heritage Board designated several of these buildings County Landmark #71 in July 1981. The ranch is within the Los Angeles Studio Zone.

Rancho Temescal was a 13,339-acre (53.98 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Ventura County and Los Angeles County, California given in 1843 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Francisco Lopez and José Arellanes. The word “temescal” is Spanish for "sweat bath" or "sweat lodge", deriving from the Nahuatl “temazcalli”. The grant was located in the upper end of the Santa Clara Valley, in the eastern section of Ventura County, in the upper Santa Clara River Valley near the base of the Topatopa Mountains where Piru Creek and the Santa Clara River meet. The grant encompassed present-day Lake Piru and town of Piru.

Tapo Canyon (Ventureño: Ta’apu, pronounced \tap’ō\) is a series of canyons and a wildlife corridor in the western Santa Susana Mountains, north of Simi Valley in Ventura County, Southern California. It's the main filming location of the well-known TV show Little House on the Prairie in the 1970s. Tapo Canyon Regional Park is an open-space park and camping ground administered by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. It is situated in the midst of the many canyons and rolling hills found in this particular region of northern Simi Valley. Today, the park offers recreational activities as mountain biking, horseback-riding, hiking, as well as campgrounds, picnic areas, and sixteen RV camp hook ups. The elevation here goes up as far as 2300 feet, which offers great panoramic views along much of its hiking trails up on the hills. It is a 3.4 mile hike south of the Santa Clara River in Piru, CA, and about 4 miles west of Pico Canyon in Santa Clarita, Los Angeles County.

Moorpark College is a public community college in Moorpark, California. It was established in 1967 with enrollment of 2,500 students and enrolled 14,254 students in 2014.