Moorpark is a city in Ventura County in Southern California. Moorpark was founded in 1900. Take a look below for 15 interesting and amazing facts about Moorpark, California, United States.
1. The town grew from just over 4,000 citizens in 1980 to over 25,000 by 1990.
2. As of 2006, Moorpark was one of the fastest-growing cities in Ventura County.
3. The population was 34,421 at the 2010 census, up from 31,415 at the 2000 census.
4. The town most likely was named after the Moorpark apricot, which used to grow in the area (hence the apricot flower on the town’s seal and flag).
5. The apricot, in turn, was named for Admiral Lord Anson’s estate Moor Park in Hertfordshire, England, the apricot was introduced in 1688.
6. Some of Moorpark’s previous unofficial and official names include Epworth, Fremontville, Penrose, Fairview, and Little Simi.
7. Chumash people were the first to inhabit what is now known as Moorpark. A Chumash village, known as Quimisac (Kimishax), was located in today’s Happy Camp Canyon Regional Park. They were hunters and gatherers who often traveled between villages to trade. The village of Quimisac once controlled the local trade of fused shale in the region.
8. The area was later part of the large Rancho Simi land grant given in 1795 to the Pico brothers by Governor Diego de Borica of Alta California.
9. Robert W. Poindexter, the secretary of the Simi Land and Water Company, received the land when the association was disbanded. A map showing the townsite was prepared in November 1900. It was a resubdivision of the large lot subdivision known as Fremont, or Fremontville. An application for a post office was submitted on June 1, 1900, and approved by August of that year. The application noted that the town had a railroad depot.
10. The town grew after the 1904 completion of a 7,369-foot (2,246 m) tunnel through the Santa Susana Mountains. Moorpark was then on the main route of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Coast Line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The depot remained in operation until it was closed in 1958. It was eventually torn down around 1965.
11. Moorpark was one of the first cities to run off commercial nuclear power in the entire world, and the second in the United States, after Arco, Idaho, on July 17, 1955, which is the first city in the world to be lit by atomic power. For one hour on November 12, 1957, this fact was featured on Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now television show.
12. The reactor, called the Sodium Reactor Experiment was built by the Atomics International division of North American Aviation at the nearby Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The Sodium Reactor Experiment operated from 1957 to 1964 and produced 7.5 megawatts of electrical power at a Southern California Edison-supplied generating station.
13. Moorpark College opened on September 11, 1967. Moorpark College is one of the few colleges that features an exotic animal training and management program. Moorpark was incorporated as a city on July 1, 1983.
14. In 1996, Moorpark’s Little League All-Star team represented the West Region in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA.
15. In February 2005, a Siberian tiger named Tuffy that escaped from a local residence was shot and killed in one of Moorpark’s parks. This created a great deal of uproar, because the animal control officers used a gun instead of a tranquilizer to kill the tiger, primarily because the tiger could not be shot from the proper angle for a tranquilizer to prove effective.
