Museum to Re-Create 1876 for an Evening

Voices of the past will reverberate through the halls of the Stagecoach Inn Museum in early October.

“An Evening on the Conejo--1876,” an annual look at the area’s past, will transport visitors back to the days when the Stagecoach Inn Museum was known as the Grand Union Hotel, offering travelers on the old El Camino Real shooting, fishing, bathing and dining at a first-rate table. The program will be offered Oct. 4, 5, 11 and 12.

Starting at 6:30 p.m., groups of up to 12 will tour the museum grounds and be given the opportunity to talk to volunteers in period dress portraying early Ventura County residents, such as the Conejo Valley’s first postmaster, Egbert Starr Newbury; a teacher of a one-room schoolhouse; and ranchers arguing over the merits of cattle versus sheep.

“It’s an intimate look at the past,” said event coordinator Jo Ann Goff. “Everyone you talk to won’t know anything beyond 1876.”

After touring the museum’s reconstructed Mexican adobe, carriage house, Timber School and other buildings, visitors will break bread during an authentic 1870s supper at the inn.

The Stagecoach Inn Museum was initially located along the El Camino Real, now the Ventura Freeway, but was moved to its present site at 51 S. Ventu Park Road in the mid-1960s when the road was widened. In April 1970, the original wooden building burned to the ground, but was rebuilt and opened its doors in 1976. Tickets for the event, now in its seventh season, are $40 per person.

Proceeds will benefit the Conejo Valley Historical Society, which runs the museum and sponsors activities, such as reenactments of 19th-century school life for students in the region.

Reservations for the event are by mail only. For more information, call Goff (805) 446-8547.