Camarillo ( KAM-ə-REE-oh) is a city in Ventura County in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 70,741, an lump of 5,540 from the 65,201 counted in the 2010 Census. Camarillo is named for brothers Juan and Adolfo Camarillo, prominent Californios who owned Rancho Calleguas and founded the city. California State University, Channel Islands is housed upon the former grounds of the Camarillo State Hospital.

At the mature of European right of entry in the 18th century, Camarillo had been inhabited by the Chumash Indians for thousands of years.

Present day Camarillo and the larger Oxnard Plain were portions of a paramount Chumash capital at the village of Muwu (today’s Point Mugu). Simo’mo (CA-VEN-24), which translates to “the saltbush patch”, was a Chumash village located upstream from Mugu Lagoon near the city of Camarillo. Caves later than ancient pictographs are located in the area around Conejo Grade including a site used for religious ceremonies dating urge on to 500 A.D., where two Chumash villages were located: Lalimanux (Lalimanuc or Lalimanuh) and Kayɨwɨš or Kayiwish (Kawyis) (CA-VEN-243). The village of Kayɨwɨš (Chumash: “The Head”) was first encountered by Europeans of the first Portola expedition on August 16, 1795.

By the to the fore 1820s, Mexico had gained independence from Spain, and brusquely afterward California joined itself when Mexico. The Mexican land succeed to system was liberalized in 1824, resulting in many large grants in California and the proliferation of Ranchos north of the border. One grant to José Pedro Ruiz created Rancho Calleguas in 1837, in the Place that is now Camarillo. The inherit was complex sold to Juan Camarillo, who had arrived in 1834 as a devotee of the Híjar-Padrés colony; it was his sons Adolfo and Juan that are qualified with the founding of the town that was to bear their name.