Good Times at Lake Casitas
Skinny Dipping and Other Misdemeanors
And, just like that, I’m about three months short of being three-quarters of a century old. Un-friggin’-believable! In some ways, it seems like a really long time since I was a boy in the 1950s, but then again, it only seems like yesterday. What a trip! So dang much has happened during my life. Overall, it’s been a mighty dang good ride!
Some people around these parts refer to me as a local amateur historian. I appreciate the description, but it’s kinda inaccurate. I’m an Ojai Valley Native, as was my Dad (Harold). His father (Clyde) moved here in the early 1920s. I’ve just kept my eyes and ears open all these years, and am fortunate enough to remember old stuff to lay on folks and, hopefully, not annoy them too much by doin’ so!
This ramble of mine is gonna be about a few of my experiences at Lake Casitas, which has sat in the Santa Ana Valley since 1959.
IT BEGAN WITH A DAM
Lake Casitas Intake Structure Under Construction, 1958. PHOTO IS FROM CASITAS MUNICIPAL WATER DISTRICT.
When my little brother, Mitch, and I were small boys, our parents would sometimes drive to and from Ventura via the Casitas Pass Road, mainly because the Valley was so pretty, with its wide-open spaces and rolling, oak-covered hills. Mom (Arlou) would say something to Dad like, “Harold, please take the back way to Ventura. The Santa Ana Valley is so delightful this time of year with all the green grass and wildflowers.”
Drew’s second-grade photo, most likely seven or eight years old, around the age he was when he and his Dad watched the Lake Casitas dam being built.
The road took us through Foster Park, as well as the community known as “Foster Park,” which was pretty much demolished when the 33 Freeway was extended in the mid-1960s. A dam was built on top of Casitas Pass Road, and since the road no longer connected to the pass leading up through the mountains to Carpenteria, the name of the road was changed to “Casitas Vista Road.” Unfortunately, during the 1990s, the road leading up the face of the dam to the parking lot on top was closed to public entry and has never been reopened, leaving it a dead end at the base of the dam with no vista of Casitas Lake to speak of.
The dam was constructed on Coyote Creek, only two miles from the Ventura River, into which Coyote Creek flows. It’s always cracked me up how we Southern Californians call many of our dry washes creeks and rivers. This past January, my wife and I took a trip to Peru and boated on the Amazon River. That’s a REAL river! Anyway, in 1958, Dad and I were standing at the base of the dam as it was being built, standing on the lake side. I don’t recall any water being backed up, so Coyote Creek was probably dry as a bone. I musta been around seven years old at the time. I recall looking up the inside face of the dam to its top, where Dad and I could see heavy equipment like belly-drop dump trucks moving along like little ants scurrying about. Through my child’s eyes, that dam looked to be about as high as Mount Everest! Dad was around thirty-three and full of enthusiasm, telling me how the dam would create a huge lake and be a lifesaver for all of us locals. I’d only seen about a dozen drops of rain in my whole life up to that point, so I remember thinkin’ Dad musta lost the gray matter in his gourd. The vast Santa Ana Valley fill up with water? No way. Well, it did fill completely for the first time in 1970, and I’m glad it did, because it’s brought a lot of fun experiences to this Local Yokel.
A LIFE ON LAKES
From left to right: Arlou Mashburn (Drew’s mother) waving, Drew standing, and Jerry Kingsbury at the wheel of Drew’s father Harold’s wooden motorboat at Lake Cachuma, Santa Barbara County, during a joint Mashburn/Kingsbury camping trip in 1957.
I have foggy memories of Dad and me floatin’ around Lake Matilija, up in the mountains above the Ojai Valley, in a rowboat he built. I was probably only four or five years old. Dad wound up buying a small, wooden motorboat, and I recall going out with him in it a few times at Lake Cachuma in Santa Barbara County. Then, in about 1958, in anticipation of Lake Casitas’ completion, Dad bought a brand-new P14 (a 13-foot fiberglass boat) from a dealership that used to be in the building now housing Ojai’s American Legion.
We lived on East Aliso Street in Ojai at the time, and in 1960, we moved to a home on East Matilija Street. It was during those years that Dad first took his P14 to Lake Casitas. We entered the lake off Santa Ana Road, closer to its saddle-dam than where the main entrance is now, drove along the eastern edge of the Wadleigh Arm on a dirt road, and launched from wherever we found a good spot. There was no designated launch ramp at the time. Anybody who knows anything about Lake Casitas knows there’s a big central island. But, back when the lake first opened to public use, it didn’t exist yet. The lake was actually pretty dang small.
Near where we left Santa Ana Road, parachutists used to land close to the lake’s shore, which is now underwater. They were dropped from airplanes out of Henderson Airfield, where the mobile home park at the southeast corner of North Ventura Avenue (Highway 33) and Baldwin Road (Highway 150) is now located. It was a lot of fun watching those daredevils come down.
Summer 1959 at Santa Barbara Harbor: Mitch (six years old), Arlou (twenty-nine years old), and Harold (thirty-three years old) with Harold's P14 boat. Photo taken by Drew (eight years old).
Lake Casitas grew larger, and so did I. During the summer of 1963, our family (Blake and M’Lou had been added) moved into the South Rice Road home our parents had built on three-quarters of an acre near the Ventura County Sheriff Department’s Honor Farm jail. That facility closed years ago and now houses the Ojai Raptor Center, Ed’s Recycling, and much more. I was about to enter seventh grade at Matilija Junior High School, which is now Nordhoff Junior and Senior High School. I was twelve years old. When we first moved into this brand-spankin’ new home, I didn’t know any other kids in the new neighborhood (and it was a lot smaller back then, too). By this time, I had been to the lake a number of times with Dad. Therefore, I knew my way around it quite well, and it was now only three miles from our home.
Because I had so few neighborhood friends and dug fishing, I’d pedal my three-speed “Cavalier” (English-made) bicycle out to the lake many, many weekends. It had a basket mounted above the front wheel on the handlebars, just about big enough to hold a VW Bug. It was large enough to carry my tackle box, jacket, bagged lunch and snacks, water bottle, and much more. My fishing pole would break down into two pieces. I’d take it apart, then strap it under the bar in front of the seat. You know, the one you have to straddle on a Boy’s bicycle. I’d ride to all areas of the lake on the established roads. Some of them are now underwater.
Eventually, I got to know a few neighborhood kids, and once in a while, one of them would ride out to the lake with me. For example, I knew a boy named “Pancho,” a cousin of the Silvestri kids who lived down the street. I met Pancho through my buddy Little Joe Silvestri (Big Joe was his dad), and talked him into riding out to the lake with me a few times. I don’t recall landing many fish with him, but we had a good time hangin’ out there together.
From left to right: Mitch Mashburn, Drew, and Mark Kingsbury showing off their new bicycles on East Matilija Street in Ojai, circa 1962. This is the bicycle Drew began riding out to Lake Casitas in 1963. Could Dad have found larger baskets?
THE STYROFOAM BOAT
One time, Pancho and I found a big chunk of white styrofoam up on the bank, about two to three feet thick, three feet wide, and six feet long. Being thirteen years old, we thought like thirteen-year-olds. That thing would make a fine boat! So we put it in the water, loaded our fishing gear on it, and shoved off, paddling with our hands while sitting cross-legged. Water lapped over the top. I remember being out in the middle of the arm in a breeze, wondering how we didn’t lose our gear or get run over by a speeding boat. We may not have had many decent working brain-cells, but we had enough to make it back to shore before drowning, or worse yet, getting busted by a Park Ranger. Not that I have anything against Park Rangers. I bagged forty-one years as one — just not at Lake Casitas.
THE CATFISH CAPER
Another time, Pancho and I found a bunch of baby catfish in a very shallow spot along the shore, only about two inches long. We scooped some into a container of water and hauled them over to his grandparents’ small ranch off Old Baldwin Road, near where Flora Gardens Nursery is now located. Up on a wooden tower at the ranch sat a big ol’ water tank without a top. In went the catfish. We figured they’d grow up to be big, easy-to-catch, tasty catfish. We never did go back to check whether they’d made it and grown to a catchable size. I suspect that’s because sometime during seventh or eighth grade, we discovered girls were more fun to try and catch than ol’ whiskered catfish!
Drew’s eleventh birthday, celebrated at Lake Casitas in 1962. From left to right: Brett Wilson, Buddy(Last Name Forgotten), Drew, Tom Hayes, Nick Robertson, Rick Morrow, Mitch Mashburn, and Richard Jones.
FAILURE TO LAUNCH
I have all kinds of wonderful memories of Dad and me fishing at the lake in his boat. Some mornings, we’d go over there as soon as the lake opened and wouldn’t leave until closing time. The fishing wasn’t always that great, but the time spent with Dad was PRICELESS. Many times when the fishing got super slow, Dad would say, “Let’s go get a hamburger.” That always meant going to the snack bar for a burger and a cold soda, and watching people launch their boats. If you’ve never just sat and watched boat launching, be sure to put it on your “To Do” list. We saw some genuinely funny things happen.
One of the best incidents involved a thirty-something-year-old gent and his eightish-year-old son. They were in the cab of their pickup, in the process of launching what looked like a fairly new boat with a big outboard motor. When backing an outboard-motor-equipped boat, it’s always wise to lift the motor a bit. This gent left it in the down position. He began backing the boat and trailer down the ramp, and when the rear was about twenty feet from the water, one of the trailer’s wheels dropped into a chuckhole, lowering the whole trailer. The motor’s propeller hit the ground, and the guy kept backing. In doing so, the propeller-end twisted under the rear of the trailer, ripping off the entire transom (the rear of the boat), with the transom and its attached motor falling to the ground. The guy stopped the pickup and jumped out. I don’t think his feet hit the ground, but about twice as he super-sonically ran to the back of his boat. He stood there looking at the damage, as his son bounced up and down next to him, repeating, “Daddy, what are we going to do?” A crowd gathered. People offered to help, but the gent never spoke a word. He just kept staring at the damage, mad as a hornet. I’ll bet smoke would’ve been comin’ outta his ears if it were possible! All of a sudden, he yelled “SHIT!!!” at the top of his lungs, bent over with a full adrenaline rush, and all by himself picked up the motor and transom and threw them into the boat. Without a word to the crowd, he marched back to his pickup with his son and drove off. It was awful for him, but dang near comical to us.
HOWDY WINKLE AND THE CRAPPIE
Drew with a fish he caught from the bank at Lake Casitas on a family camping trip. Circa 1964.
Back to fishing. I’ll bet I was about fourteen years old when Dad asked me to go out fishing in his boat with his buddy, Howdy Winkle. I felt like I’d made the Big Time! We got to the lake early, and we fished hard all over the lake to no avail. We went to the snack bar and the Bait and Tackle Shop at least twice to see if anyone was catching anything. Nobody was, but we weren’t discouraged. Out we went again. Dad stopped the boat way out in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t look like a likely spot to me, but I didn’t say a thing, being I was a newcomer to this fishing party. Why Dad stayed there so long, I didn’t know because zilch was happening. All of a sudden, Howdy musta got seasick and vomited into the water. Almost immediately, we began catching crappie. Howdy unknowingly chummed the fish! We filled a couple of burlap bags with crappie. When we took out for the day, other fishermen asked us how we’d done when they saw us with the burlap bags. Come to find out, we were the Fishermen-of-the-Day that day! That was great, but we had to spend what seemed like hours at home cleaning fish. Fishin’ is a lot more fun than cleanin’.
SKINNY-DIPPING AT DEEPCAT
Deepcat Lake on El Rancho Cola before Lake Casitas existed. Eventually, Lake Casitas grew so large that it engulfed this small lake. The water tank-looking thingie out in the lake is where Doug Schmelz and Drew climbed while skinny-dipping. Believe it or not, it’s still standing after all these years.
When my neighborhood buddy, Doug Schmelz, and I were around fifteen years old, we pedaled our tails from our South Rice Road homes out to the lake. It musta been during the summer months because we got really hot. I’m gonna blame what happened next on Doug. It was him who suggested we go skinny-dippin’ to cool down. We rode our bicycles out to where Deepcat Lake used to be (Deepcat had been part of El Rancho Cola, a resort and country club that once occupied the Santa Ana Valley before Lake Casitas engulfed it). Out in the middle of what used to be Deepcat is some sorta tower that kinda looks like a water tank. It’s an all-metal structure. Doug and I hid our bikes and our clothes in the tall brush, then swam out to it.
There was a metal ladder on the side. We climbed about fifteen to twenty feet to the top, where there was a rail around it and a hatch door. We were goofin’ around up there when all of a sudden rocks began zippin’ by and clanging off the tank. We looked up at a nearby cliff and spotted three boys a bit younger than us tryin’ to stone us! The pranksters had dang good throwin’ arms, and the rocks were gettin’ closer and closer. So I lifted the hatch and suggested to Doug that he follow me down inside the tank, where there was a ladder. It was pitch-black inside. Down I went, then Doug came down a ways, keeping the hatch partway open to give us some light. I wish he hadn’t because, as I looked up, my view was of his hairy posterior and other unmentionables. Looking back, it’s dang lucky that rusty old ladder didn’t collapse on us. We probably would have fallen to the bottom and never been found. Young and dumb!
After a bit, the boys quit zinging rocks at us. Then it dawned on us that they’d seen that we were unclad. What if they stole our clothes and bicycles? When the coast was clear, we quickly swam back to shore and were relieved to find all in order. How we woulda gotten home butt-naked and barefoot wouldn’t have been pretty!
THE BIG CAT
Drew on his 1961 Yamaha 80 cc motorcycle, around sixteen or seventeen years old. Taken in the front yard of his parents’ South Rice Road home in Mira Monte, circa 1967 to 1968.
You woulda thought Doug and I would have wised up a bit by the time we were sixteen. NAH! I had a 1961 Yamaha 80 cc motorcycle, and Doug borrowed his grandfather’s Honda 90. We rode out Highway 150 to the Lake Casitas area. I don’t like to keep bringin’ up the fact that Doug was always the instigator, but before I knew it, he had me pushin’ both our motorcycles under a barbed-wire fence to sneak into the lake. We immediately got onto a fuel-break that paralleled the road from the lake’s entry gate to the Coyote Creek launch ramp, climbing up and down hills. We stopped at one of the high points to take a short break. As we looked down into the shady canyon below, a BIG cat walked out into the middle of the fuel-break. We agreed it was the largest bobcat we had ever seen. Soon, off it wandered into the brush. After a bit, we continued on. We were rippin’ along the fuel-break, havin’ a good ol’ time, when we noticed a Park Ranger in a pickup driving below us trying to get our attention. We kept jammin’ along, thinkin’ he could never catch us. Eventually, the fuel-break was cut in half by a side road, and the Park Ranger was waiting there for us. BUSTED! He read us the Riot Act, made us get off the fuel-break, and told us to leave. We did. Doug went to his home, and I to mine. Later, I got to thinkin’ about that big cat. A bobcat has a short, bobbed tail. The cat we spotted had a really long, curved, black-tipped tail. DUH!!! The first Mountain Lion either of us had ever seen!
I could go on and on about other boyhood experiences I’ve had at Lake Casitas. I hope I’m not on any “WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE” lists over there. I’ve had many terrific experiences (all legal ones) there as an adult, too. The lake has a lot to offer. If you’ve never been to this paradise in our backyard, go check it out.
