Long before the name Charles Manson became synonymous with the 1969 Tate LaBianca murders, he and his cult followers treated the corridor between Oxnard and Simi Valley as their primary headquarters.
On July 20, 1968, Manson was arrested in one of the most remote parts of southern Ventura County at a ranch in Little Sycamore Canyon, near the county line.
Deputies found Manson and eight followers, including Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins, sprawling around a campfire with a 1952 bus that had been reported stolen in San Francisco just nine days earlier.
This specific arrest produced the famous black and white mugshot with the SO VENTURA CAL placard, which marks Manson’s formal transition into the local criminal record.
Manson’s first child, Valentine Michael Manson, was born on April 15, 1968, while the group was transient and squatting in houses around the Henry Levy House district and other downtown Oxnard neighborhoods.
The cult was often evicted for their lifestyle, which involved scavenging for food and a predatory practice they called creepy crawling, where they would enter local homes while residents slept just to move furniture around.
Manson was also obsessed with dune buggies, and believed they would be the key to surviving a predicted race war in the desert.
The Family ran a sophisticated theft ring targeting Volkswagen Beetles across the county to strip them down to the chassis in the Simi Hills and rebuild them into off road assault vehicles.
The rugged backroads of Simi Valley and the Santa Susana Pass served as their primary testing grounds for these vehicles.
Hikers today can still visit the Manson Family Cave in the Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park, which served as a frequent hideout and photo op spot for the cult.
While the Spahn Ranch buildings burned down in 1970, the terrain remains a permanent monument to the era when a cult leader used Ventura County as a training ground for chaos.