Oxnard, CA (OXN)

Ticket Revenue

FY 2012

$2,688,399

Station Ridership

FY 2012

81,231

Note: Fiscal year is from
October through September.

The 14,000 square foot brick modern Oxnard Transportation Center, which includes the Amtrak station, was completed in 1987. The former Oxnard Southern Pacific passenger station on East 5th Street was used by the Coast Starlight passenger trains until the Oxnard Transportation Center opened in 1987.

Although Oxnard is known for its strawberries and lima beans, it is in sugar beets that the town has its contemporary roots. The Spanish came to the area in 1782 to establish the Mission San Buenaventura amongst the Chumash tribes, and the area was used for ranching until the 1850s when American farmers arrived. The Oxnard brothers from Chino came to invest at a time when local farmers were experimenting with planting sugar beets as an alternative to lima beans, as overproduction had driven down lima bean prices. They built a $2 million dollar sugar beet processing factory (their third) which was completed in 1897. It required 500 people to run it, as well as an entire community to support them. A town sprang up overnight.

When it was constructed, the factory was the largest in the world, only to be dwarfed by a Northern California factory a year later. The Oxnard brothers, ironically, never lived in the area, although the town took its name from them in 1898. A railroad spur directly to the factory arrived a year later, boosting the town’s growth. The factory lasted until 1958, when it shut down after 60 years of continuous operation. Originally nine stories tall, with huge twin smokestacks, the factory spread over 75,000 square feet. The 24,000 square-foot 1910 warehouse next to it still stands, but the railroad tracks to it are no longer in use.

Oxnard was, at its beginning, a wild company town, and it was incorporated in 1903 in an effort to gain control of the 17 saloons that served the then 2,200 residents.

The city is also home to two large U.S. Navy bases, Port Hueneme and NAS Point Mugu. The Port of Hueneme is also the largest commercial port between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the mid-twentieth century the city also developed a new harbor, the Channel Islands Harbor.

It was in Oxnard’s Channel Islands Harbor that the California Strawberry Festival originated in 1984. The strawberry crop in Ventura County takes up 11,538 acres and produces more than 27 percent of the state's supply, with the spring peak season production of 10 million pint baskets of strawberries shipped worldwide daily. The fruit takes its name from how it is “strewn” amongst the plant’s leaves in multiple groups.

Amtrak provides ticketing and baggage services at this facility.

Oxnard is served by 12 daily trains.