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is a city of 37,342 people, in Southern California. It was founded in 1900 by Robert Poindexter, presumably named after the moorpark apricots that grew in the area. The city has experienced a great amount of growth since the late 1970s.
The valley where Moorpark is located was originally inhabited by the Chumash. The area was part of the large Rancho Simi land grant given in 1795 to the Pico brothers (Javier, Patricio, and Miguel) By Governor Diego de Borica of Alta California.
Moorpark was founded in 1887 by Robert W. Poindexter. The town grew after the 1904 completion of a tunnel through the Santa Susana Mountains, which allowed the Southern Pacific Railroad to establish a depot there, a depot which lasted until 1964.
In 1963, Moorpark College was founded. Moorpark College opened on September 11, 1967. Moorpark College is one of the few colleges that features an Exotic Animal Training and Management Program.
In February 2005, a tiger named Tuffy who escaped from a local residence was shot and killed in one of Moorpark's parks. This created a great deal of uproar, because the Animal Control officers used a gun instead of a Tranquilizer to kill the tiger, primarily because the tiger could not be shot from the proper angle for a Tranquilizer to prove effective. Candlelight Vigil memorials were held for the late Tuffy. As of 2006 the family who owned the tiger was on trial for not having permits and proper caging for Tuffy.
Just a month later, in March 2005, the fairly complete remains (about 75%) of an unusually old mammoth, possibly the rare Southern mammoth (
), were discovered in the foothills of Moorpark at the site of a housing development.
In 2006, the Moorpark city council seceded from the Ventura County library system to create their own city library system, much like nearby Thousand Oaks.
On February 28, 2006 a housing proposal, North Park Village, which would have added 1,680 houses on in the north-east area of the city, was defeated by a landslide in a city election.