Somis is an unincorporated community of Ventura County, California that was established in 1892 by Thomas Bard and D.T. Perkins on a portion of the Mexican land grant, Rancho Las Posas. The name of this townsite may have been derived from “water of the scrub oak,” a Chumash placename referring to the presence of water Somis is in the Las Posas Valley(p194) on the south bank of Fox Barranca, just west of Arroyo Las Posas. Like many of the farms on the adjacent Oxnard Plain, the crops of corn, wheat and barley grown here were shipped through the wharf that had been constructed in Hueneme in 1871. Agricultural products were able to be shipped by rail when the line from Los Angeles to San Francisco was routed through the valley and a stop was established adjacent to the community.
