WAY OUT WEST IN SIMI; CITY DREW SETTLERS A CENTURY AGO.

Byline: Don Holland and Lisa Mascaro Daily News Staff Writers

As the century turned in Ventura County, the early 1900s brought a new era with families settling the landscape, electricity brightening city streets and, in time, a rail tunnel to more swiftly connect the region with neighboring Los Angeles County.

From across the country, settlers came to newly advertised regions, such as Simiopolis, setting down roots in communities that would decades later bear their names.

The Strathearns and Appletons arrived in Simi Valley, as did the Borchards and Janss in Conejo Valley, making their homes during an era that would slowly but surely carve out a niche for the east county.

``That's why I think Simi has always been overlooked - it was just a slow and steady wins the race kind of community,'' said historian Pat Havens, who helped write a book on local history by the Simi Valley Historical Society and Museum. ``I think the same thing was pretty much happening everywhere . . . Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Simi.''

Dry farming was the industry of the day as landowners tilled their properties with wheat and barley - more than 700 workers were employed at one point in the beet industry - rather than the citrus groves that would later come with irrigation systems.

Many ranchers were hesitant to again raise livestock after the losses during the drought of the 1870s, said Brad Bauer, special collections librarian at the Grant R. Brimhall Library in Thousand Oaks.

While the east county was just being developed, the Ventura area was already dealing with big city problems, including a move toward alcohol prohibition.

By 1900, the Women's Christian Temperance Union was a political force in the county, and opened a ``purity library and a waiting toilet room'' for farm wives visiting Ventura for the day.

``Prohibition was a huge issue,'' said Suzanne Lawrence, a researcher and docent at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, adding that Oxnard had a saloon for every 35 residents and opium dens were known to exist in some areas. ``The entire county went dry in 1911.''

Transportation developments altered the landscape during the first two decades of the century, with the area's first automobile spotted during that time, the building of the Norweigen Grade and the opening of the Santa Susana rail tunnel linking Ventura County with neighboring Los Angeles County.

The building of the railroad tunnel - actually a series of three tunnels that took four years to construct - meant travelers no longer had to ride out of their way and then double back into Los Angeles, but could travel straight through the narrow Santa Susana Pass.

``That truly was a major thing to get those tunnels through there,'' said Havens.

Education was beginning to be under way across the area, with the Ventura area's first kindergarten opened in 1906 and Simi Valley's Santa Susana School opened in 1917, to replace the one-room schoolhouse that had served youngsters since before the turn of the century.

But no sooner than Simi Valley's new brick school went up than the Santa Barbara Earthquake hit in 1925, causing no damage but rattling nerves enough to close the school down. Children studied at a nearby church, according to local historians.

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PHOTO (1-2) A map inside a prospectus, produced around 1887 by the California Mutual Benefit Co. of Chicago, promotes the town of Simiopolis. Mount McCoy is visible in the background of a view of the south side of Los Angeles Avenue at 4th Street around 1907.