Picture this: A much younger Conejo Valley. Lynn Road did not connect to Olsen. Westlake High School wasn’t built and the Conejo schools were part of the Oxnard school system. Much of Thousand Oaks was still ranch land. There was a policy at the neighborhood stores that if they didn’t have what you needed, they would get it. Is this a vision of the last century?

No. This is a childhood memory of Pam Bradley who grew up in the Conejo Valley. Pam moved here from Canoga Park in 1971 at the age of 3. Her mother was from Chicago. Her father was from Kansas and was a math teacher at Thousand Oaks High School. She has two younger brothers.

Pam is personable and dynamic, has two children, a husband, two dogs, a home to tend and a job teaching high school English at Santa Susana Magnet High School for Computers and Performing Arts in Simi Valley. Talk about a full schedule!

Pam shared some of her memories to give us a glimpse of the Conejo before all the houses were built and when it was a favorite filming destination for Hollywood. She called the hills and trails of Thousand Oaks her back yard. The horizon included sheep and unobstructed fields. The Conejo was just sprouting, a mere sapling in the lifetime of a community.

Sure, there were tract houses, but in the schools there were only 18 kids to a classroom. There was a skating rink and bowling alley, the streets were quieter and the Conejo Valley Days parade was more of a small-town affair with whole neighborhoods that got involved.

Pam and her friends went outside to find things to do. They didn’t have to attend organized activities to see their friends. Neighborhood happenings were just around the corner or a few streets away. There was a whole valley to explore. They played in the hills and explored the trails. They learned to live side by side with coyote dens and Conejo Creek.

At the time, the Civic Arts Plaza location was a zoo. A new apartment complex, Camelot, wasn’t named for King Arthur’s realm, but because it once served as the camel lot of that zoo. There was a Taco Bell nearby. Pam remembers going there and hearing lions and elephants from across the street. On Thousand Oaks Boulevard! Lions and elephants, oh my!

In addition there was a hardware store, a butcher and a used auto parts store, where there was a blue macaw that flirted whenever females entered and, according to Pam, swore like a sailor. The bakery at the corner of Conejo Road and T.O. Boulevard was in the same stone building that was the first post office. Pam’s father talked about how long it took to get to work, not because of freeway traffic but because Moorpark Road was blocked because of sheep.

Most important, the Conejo was a community of familiar people whose doors you could knock on for a cup of sugar at any time. People didn’t lock their front doors and the paranoia that we see today just didn’t exist. If someone got in trouble, everyone knew about it—and families were there to help and check up.

Occasionally, Pam still sees some of the people who lived here back in those days, at the Conejo Valley Days Carnival or at the movies, and appreciates that so many of those families still call the Conejo home. Once in a while, Pam recognizes a name in the newspaper and, when looking for a service in the phone book, she’ll look for the businesses that are now run by the children of the original owners.

Why does that matter?

Continuity. It makes the Conejo a place that is still vital, alive and vibrant. Despite all the changes, our community has endured. It’s a beautiful valley that has good schools and is close enough for anything––the opera or beach, the snow, Santa Barbara, Ojai or the mountains.

Pam wouldn’t trade growing up here for anything. She sometimes wonders if her children will settle here, but living in the Conejo is a choice, not an accident. Pam admits that having more places to go is great, but worries about homogenization and the shrinking vistas. A community’s character comes from its independence.

It is Pam’s hope that those in a position to do so will preserve our valley for the generations to come.