PORT HUENEME : Retiree Writes History Book on the City

Four years ago, Powell Greenland thought life was a bit boring. So the Port Hueneme retiree embarked on a journey to discover what events helped to shape the tiny city of Port Hueneme.

He spent hours running from library to library. He read hundreds of newspapers clips and interviewed scores of residents.

Today, four years later, the 74-year-old Greenland has published the first in-depth book on the history of Port Hueneme, according to Charles Johnson, a librarian for the Ventura County Museum of History and Art.

“This is superior to anything that has been published before on the history of Port Hueneme,” Johnson said. “Powell Greenland was extremely thorough and even-handed with his research and analysis.”

Greenland, who has a bachelor’s degree in history but who spent 35 years working as a businessman, said history has been a passion and that writing the book fulfilled one of his dreams.

“It was a labor of love,” Greenland said of the 174-page book. “I have always been fascinated with history and I like writing. So this was a fun project.”

One passage in the hard-cover book, which includes 180 illustrations and several maps and drawings, concerns the migration of Port Hueneme residents to a bustling young Oxnard in the late 1800s.

Quoting a newspaper article, the book states:

“Dr. D.W. Dilworth has concluded to remove to Oxnard. . . . If our sister town doesn’t quit influencing our good citizens to move there, we’ll go to work and build a lot of elegant cottages on the beach and coax Oxnarders to reside here . . . “

“There is a job lot of us left here yet, and we’ll stay with old Hueneme till the crack of doom. If Oxnard wants the rest of us, she’ll have to club us insensible and drag us out.”

Besides the history of Port Hueneme and the local port, the book has information on Oxnard, Ormond Beach and some nearby areas, Greenland said.

Greenland, a Port Hueneme resident since 1987, said he was inspired to write the book three years after he had moved from Los Angeles to Port Hueneme.

“When I came here, I read a biography of Thomas Bard (Port Hueneme’s founder) and I started looking around for something about the city itself, but I did not find much,” Greenland said. “So I figured a book like this one needed to be written.”

The book--titled “Port Hueneme: A History”--will be available within four weeks at the Ventura County Maritime Museum, Ventura County Museum of History & Art, Port Hueneme Historical Museum and at local bookstores, Greenland said.

Publication of the book was funded by donations. All profits of the $25 book will go to the Ventura County Maritime Museum, Greenland said.