Montalvo - last town impacted - 50 miles, 4:40 AM

The flood reached the highway bridge at Montalvo about 4:40 AM.  The bridge, which had been constructed in 1898, was the first permanent crossing of the Santa Clara River connecting to the small farming community of El Rio on the southern side of the river. 

Traffic was being held north on the highway at Montalvo and south of the bridge at Oxnard much to the chagrin of a bus driver wanting to stay on schedule heading south. An adamant highway patrolman held him firm as the floodwaters hit the bridge and relentlessly overwhelmed it as it sought the ocean.  Only the Southern Pacific railroad lines lay between the bridge and the pacific and all trains had been halted.

J.G. Hill founded Montalvo in 1886. Some accounts indicate that the community was named after Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, the Spanish author who first described the Island of California in the 1510 novel Las Sergas de Esplandián.

The name "California" was born in the mind of one Garcí Ordóñez de Montalvo, a Spanish novelist who, in 1510, published a book called The Exploits of Esplandián. It was very popular at the time, read even by the great conquistador himself, Hernán Cortéz. In 1524 Cortéz wrote his king that he expected to find the legendary island of the Amazons "a few days' sail to the northwest."

In 1887, the Southern Pacific Railroad built the railroad line from Los Angeles through the Santa Clara River Valley northerly through the area.

In its early days, Montalvo was served by the Washington Street railroad depot. For awhile, the depot was the terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad in Ventura County with goods being carted to awaiting ships from this end of the line station.

It was a thriving community in the late 19th century. In the late 1880s, the University of Southern California planned to establish a satellite campus, to be known as the "Collegiate Institute", on a grassy knoll in Montalvo. According to one account: "There was a splendid hotel beside the large depot. The town boasted a daily newspaper, a Chinese laundry, a general store and post office that was the center of life along the river." Montalvo promoters touted the community as "the Pasadena of Ventura County."

In the early 1900s, after railroad service was extended to Oxnard, most of the homes in Montalvo were physically relocated across the Santa Clara River to Oxnard. Oxnard became a boom town, and home mover John Brakey developed a thriving business loading homes on rollers and moving them across the dry river bed from Montalvo to Oxnard.[5] During this time, Montalvo also lost its newspaper and printing press. By the 1920s, most of Montalvo's population had relocated elsewhere with little loss of life on the night of the flood.