Ventura was an unknown vacation spot for the Ness family. The family from Merced County was only stopping by on the way home from a Disneyland trip. The Nesses knew they wanted to stop somewhere north of Los Angeles, and friends had told them about the slower pace of Ventura County.

Once they arrived, they engaged in their favorite family activity — building sand castles — under the shadow of the Ventura Pier, where they were among the few people on the beach. Now they're hooked on the county.

They immediately fell in love with the mellow beaches, the lack of people, the easy pace.

"We'll come back here," said Dave Ness, as his daughters, Catherine, 5, and Laura, 2, shored up their castle against the incoming tide.

As the summer vacation season heats up, tourism officials are selling the county as much for what it hasn't become as what it is. They talk about the mostly undeveloped beaches. The rural countryside where tourists can stroll through working farms and a way of life much of California has paved over. The mountains that roll through undeveloped swaths of open space.

Tourism dollars spent in the county have increased by an average of 3.4 percent annually since 1992, just below the statewide average of 3.6 percent.

From the Thousand Oaks area, where five new hotels are being built, to the Ventura Harbor, where sales are up, Ventura County is having a healthy tourist season.

While there is no countywide tourism bureau, individual pockets of the county are reporting increased tourist traffic.

Taken as a whole it makes the county a travel destination that people like the Ness family are starting to discover.

What they find is an area that is geographically and metaphorically something between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.

Visitors enjoy authentic cities

Jim Luttjohann, Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau executive director, said one of his favorite comments about Ventura came from a visitor.

"What I like about coming to Ventura is it doesn't feel like Main Street at Disneyland. It feels authentic," Luttjohann recalled the man saying.

His agency's funding, which comes in part from an occupancy tax visitors pay at hotels, shows that more people are being attracted to that authenticity.

In 2000, he received about $479,000, this year he'll see about $561,000.

At Ventura Harbor Village, sales tax revenue has increased from $8.4 million in 2000 to $14 million in 2004, said Leticia Wilson, marketing director for the Ventura Port District. Part of that increase is tied to a handful of new stores opening, she said.

She thinks people are drawn to the harbor because they can not only eat and check out yachts there, but also watch fishing boats coming back from a day's work.

Trying to increase visitors

Wilson said the harbor's slightly out-of-the-way location is still one of the biggest obstacles.

Talks are under way to bring cruise ships to the harbor, which could dramatically boost the number of incoming tourists.

While he has no solid numbers to back up his theory, Thousand Oaks economic development manager Gary Wartik said the fact that five new hotels are being built in the area shows more tourists are expected.

He said a new athletic facility at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks will probably bring more tourists to the area for various tournaments when it opens around 2007.

Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills and Westlake Village recently discussed the possibility of starting a collaborative group aimed at maximizing the amount of money tourists spend in the area.

Luttjohann said the city, as well as the county, gained from the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley in the early '90s.

Visitors are also coming to sample a bit of rural life that has been disappearing in other parts of Southern California. Agritourism, centered around the experience of rural farm life, its becoming more popular.

Nostalgia of county farms

Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark has been a working farm since 1860, but in the late 1990s owner Craig Underwood started seeing another source of revenue for his farm — tourists.

He's since opened the farm to visitors, and last year 150,000 people came to pet livestock, pick their own pumpkins and take hay rides.

"Visiting a farm is a very nostalgic thing to do, and some people still have an attachment to farms," said Underwood.

The rural farms of the county offer something people don't see many other places around here, he said.

"You can drive from San Diego to the Conejo Grade and there isn't a lot of open space," Underwood said.

Tourism on the rise

Mike Nelson, a board member of the Heritage Valley Tourism Bureau, which markets Fillmore, Santa Paula and Piru, said his group is capitalizing on people drawn to the rustic feel of the agricultural area.

"I think the nostalgia experience is what people are looking for," he said. "It's closer to the roots of what they grew up with."

Two years ago the annual Santa Paula Citrus Festival had 5,000 attendees, last year it had 10,000, and he's expecting this weekend's event to draw up to 20,000.

Luttjohann said that while Ventura is seeing more tourists every year, there is still work to do to define his city as a definitive vacation destination.

The marketing motto for the Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau is "California Coast's Rising Star."

Rising, as in there is still a way to go.

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