The Lost Beach Campground
Shannon Menzel Kenny, May 2026
LOST CALIFORNIA
Ventura County
The lost campground. Almost no sand. Rocks everywhere. Surrounded by oil wells. But here’s the catch: There was surf.
Long before there was a formal parks system, when travel was slow and time was slower, picnic and roadside rest stops were a thing.
Camp Comfort is still one of the best surviving examples. Travelers between the Ojai Valley and San Buenaventura stopped at the grove of Oaks by a flowing creek. The land belonged to John Hobson, who was logging the area at the time, and in an effort to save the grove from being cleared, E.P. Foster convinced the Ventura County Board of Supervisors to purchase 21 acres from Hobson in 1904. It became Ventura County’s very first public park.
And just like that, Ventura County fell in love with public spaces.
Livery Team at Camp Comfort, 1905-1910. Courtesy of the Museum of Ventura County.
In 1906, Foster purchased the first parcel of the Foster Memorial Park, all 30 acres, and donated it to the County in memory of his only son. Seaside Park was next in 1909. In 1915, the County established the Rincon Parks when the Hobson brothers donated two coastal parcels, and the Faria family donated a third.
The parks were originally known as Rincon No. 3, 4, and 5. In 1961, Rincon No. 3 became Faria Park, and the two northern parks were renamed Hobson and Hoffman Park, honoring Edith Hobson Hoffman, granddaughter of William Dewey Hobson, the "Father of Ventura County."
Hobson Campground, July, 1964.
Faria Beach Campground, 1960s.
Faria, on Pitas Point, offered 65 camp sites.
Hobson had 60 sites.
Hoffman Park, just beyond Sea Cliff, 35 sites.
In the 1960s, Hobson Park was the largest and most popular of the three. It would often fill up first. The county fee was $1 per day.
Campers in 1961 at Hoffman Park.
Hoffman Park. 366 feet of oceanfront campgrounds.
Rocks instead of sand.
Oil wells in every direction.
The railroad on one side, Highway 101 on the other. And still, campers came. The campground was sandwiched between Oil Piers and Stanley’s Steakhouse. It was part of the story. Surf history. The Ventura coast, lined with rocky points and miles of coastline to discover. Days spent looking for surf - and finding it.
An epic tale that came to a crash in 1970.
Surfers camping in the 1960s.
Plans to widen Highway 101 from Ventura to Carpinteria began reshaping the Rincon coastline entirely. Stanley’s Steakhouse disappeared, the fire station moved, and a once-loved surf break was buried beneath rock. The loss of Stanley’s Steakhouse and Surfbreak stung the most.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, Hoffman Park vanished too.
Today, almost nothing remains but a few newspaper clippings and fading memories of campers sleeping between the surf and the railroad tracks. But for a brief stretch of time, Hoffman Park was part of a very different California coast.
