Did You Know?
Leo Carrillo (silent film star and 1950s TV actor) was a descendant of the family who originally owned the Rancho Sespe land grant.
Fillmore is named after Jerome Fillmore, Southern Pacific Superintendent, who may only have passed through the town on a special train in May of 1887.
C. C. Elkins owned 50 acres of orange groves in Florida before coming to Fillmore.
The boards of the temporary Cactus Flat school were uncut because the ranchers only loaned them for the building of the school and wrote their names on them to make sure they got them back.
The original San Cayetano School was west of Sespe Creek off 7th Street.
​
By 1900 Fillmore’s population was 150 people according to Rand McNally. It had grown to 13,643 a century later and to 16,419 by 2020.
Main Street was the town’s main street until it burned in 1903, then Central Avenue developed into the “main” street.
​
Pole Creek originally emptied into the Sespe until it was rerouted to flow into the Santa Clara.
​
The Fillmore Rotary club was founded in 1905.
The original (1911) Fillmore Union High School was considered to be one of the most beautiful schools in the state.
​
In 1911, the Ventura County Superintendent of Schools thought the new Fillmore High School was too big and there would never be enough students to fill it. Fillmore had to build a bigger school in 1924.
​
The first high school graduating class was in 1911 and the Alumni Association was founded in 1915 when there were 15 alumni.
​
City Manager Clarence Arrasmith sponsored City “Happy Hours” during the depression. These were variety shows – no alcohol.
The mural in the City Council Chamber was painted as a backdrop for the Ventura County Fair.
Fillmore was then next to last town in California to go from operator assisted calls to direct dial in 1963. Avalon on Catalina Island was the last town.
​
The canon in front of the Memorial Building used to be fired during the May Festival.
Two large alligators washed out of animal sanctuary on the mountain on the east end of the valley near Piru in the 1969 flood.
​
One family has given us 3 mayors. William H. Price, 1926; his son, Lester Price, 1936; and W. H. Price’s great-grandson, Bill Dewey, 1979.
​
Frank Munoz was the first Hispanic mayor in 1972.
​
Delores Day was the first women mayor in 1977.