Page "Oxnard, California" Paragraph 5

Henry T. Oxnard, founder of today's Moorhead, Minnesota-based American Crystal Sugar Co who operated a successful sugar beet factory with his three brothers ( Benjamin, James, and Robert ) in Chino, California, was enticed to build a $ 2 million factory on the plain inland from Port Hueneme.

Shortly after the 1897 beet campaign, a new town emerged, now commemorated on the National Register of Historic Places as the Henry T. Oxnard Historic District.

Ironically, the Oxnard brothers never lived in their namesake city, and they sold both the Chino and the giant red-brick Oxnard factory with its landmark twin smokestacks in 1899 for nearly $ 4 million.

The Oxnard factory operated from August 19, 1899 until October 26, 1959.

Factory operations were interrupted in the Oxnard Strike of 1903.

Given the growth of the town of Oxnard, in the spring of 1898, a railroad station was built to service the plant, which attracted a population of Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican laborers and enough commerce to merit the designation of a town.

Oxnard intended to name the settlement after the Greek word for " sugar ", zachari, but frustrated by bureaucracy, named it after himself.