Today we visited a peaceful location in the nearby mountains where the so-called “Scary Dairy” is located. The brief history of the place is this:
Once upon a time there was a mental institution, Camarillo State Hospital, and not too far from it stood a dairy with cows and everything else needed to produce cow-related food for the mental patients of the said institution.
Location: Southern California, Ventura County
(c) CSUCI library archives, http://hdl.handle.net/10139/5555 Men’s unit, 1940
The mental hospital was active from 1936 to 1997, and in the mid-1950s it treated as many as 7,000 patients. Knowing the history of mental care in the U.S. during those times, one can’t help but wonder what was going on behind the closed doors. Back then, even the dreaded electroshock therapy and lobotomy were still on place. If you dig through the archives, many weird and abusive cases will come to light. Apparently, this particular institution was known to accept especially violent patients.
(c) CSUCI library archive, http://hdl.handle.net/10139/5518 Year 1938-1940
Eventually, the “crazy house” was closed and remodeled into the California State University, Channel Islands. By the way, at first they planned to turn it into a prison.
If you aren’t familiar with the area, the school is NOT located on any island. The name simply comes from the “Channel Islands” which can be seen from the California Pacific Ocean shoreline nearby.
Many of the buildings of the ex-hospital were turned into classrooms, but some stand empty and look abandoned to this very day. Some staff and students who attend this wonderful location report that a few of the buildings are haunted.
As for the dairy (which has been abandoned since the closure of the mental hospital), there are some urban legends circulating among the locals.
Some state that mental patients might have been murdered at the dairy. Others, in contrast, hint at dairy workers killed by some runaway patients. Yet others simply mention someone dying there and haunting the place ever since.
Today, this location is wonderfully peaceful and pleasantly lacking people. Today was actually the first time when we encountered some other cars parked at the dirt ”parking lot”, and I believe it was because of the Christmas/New Year location.
We cooked some meat and fish on the portable butane gas grill. I would prefer real fire with firewood, but there is a big risk of getting a huge ticket for making an “illegal” fire anywhere in California due to dry conditions and high fire danger in most areas. While cooking, we observed a couple of helicopters flying over the mountains, and some horsemen taking their horses out for an afternoon walk (from nearby farms).
Most descriptions of the “Scary dairy” in the Internet are rather paranoid. Yeah, there are “no trespassing” signs on the wire fence, BUT there are literally ginormous holes in the said fence, and no one to really stop anyone from going in and exploring the place on the inside.
The inside of the “scary dairy” is filled with graffiti over graffiti and curious to explore. The place does have a weird feel to it, especially if you go alone and there are no other visitors exploring at the same time.
I would say if you go alone and no one else is parked at the parking lot, be aware of your surroundings and watch out for rattlesnakes and mountain lions as that would be the most logical danger out there.
The wifi is fine in this location as well unlike on some other mountain trails in the area. So if something does go wrong, you can always call for help.
