Ojai ( OH-hy; Chumash: ’Awhaỳ) is a city in Ventura County, California. Located in the Ojai Valley, it is northwest of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara. The valley is allocation of the east–west trending Western Transverse Ranges and is practically 10 miles (16 km) long by 3 miles (5 km) wide and on bad terms into a demean and an upper valley, each of thesame size, surrounded by hills and mountains. The population was 7,637 at the 2020 census, up from 7,461 at the 2010 census.

Ojai is a tourism destination known for its boutique hotels, recreation opportunities, hiking, and farmers’ market of local organic agriculture. It has little businesses specializing in local and ecologically friendly art, design, and home improvement. Chain stores are forbidden by city ordinance to help local small business onslaught and keep the town unique.

The state Ojai is derived from the Mexican-era Rancho Ojai, which in slope took its name from the Ventureño Chumash word ‘Awha’y, meaning “Moon”. The city’s self-styled nickname is “Shangri-La” referencing the natural tone of this health and spirituality-focused region as with ease as the mystical sanctuary of the 1937 film familiarization of James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon.

Ojai sits on the time-honored territory of the Chumash, a Native American people who inhabited the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what are Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south and the Channel Islands. Before the start of European settlers, at least 10,000 Chumash people lived in exceeding 150 independent villages, speaking variations of the same language. Starting in 1769, Spanish soldiers and missionaries arrived to colonize the California coast, Christianize the indigenous population, found military presidios and relocate Chumash people from their villages into Spanish missions.