good hunting. Shellfish and fish were transported from the nearby Mugu Lagoon across the Santa Monicas. The abundance of jackrabbits and other rabbit species were hunted widely for fur and meat. At one point, the Chumash here gathered a group of 27 men and killed hundreds of rabbits during a rabbit round-up, which was a significant event of late summers in the Conejo Valley. Various Chumash artifacts from these older settlements, along with petroglyphs, have been found along the Arroyo Conejo, at Rancho Sierra Vista, and particularly in the Santa Monica Mountains. The Satwiwa Native American Indian Culture Center and the Stagecoach Inn Museum in Newbury Park have displays based on some of these finds, as does the Chumash Indian Museum in Thousand Oaks. In partnership with Friends of Satwiwa, in 1978 the National Park Service began talks of developing the current Satwiwa Native American Indian Culture Center and Natural Area. Boney Mountain in southern Newbury Park is identified as a sacred site for the Chumash, and nearby Satwiwa is frequently used by the Chumash Barbareño-Ventureño Band of Mission Indians for private events, such as traditional dances and sacred ceremonies. 19th century When the Europeans first arrived in the Conejo Valley, they pressed plow to furrow and fields to barley and wheat. Newbury Park is named after its founder, Egbert Starr Newbury, who owned thousands of acres of land in the Conejo Valley and later became the first postmaster. E.S. Newbury, Howard Mills, and John Edwards were among the first to buy former Rancho El Conejo land in the early 1870s. El Rancho Conejo was an area which today encompasses most of the Conejo Valley and was named for its many rabbits. Its name derives from a Spanish land grant in California, encouraged by the Spanish- and Mexican governments. Newbury and his wife Fannie moved to California from Michigan of health reasons in 1871. He later became the first postmaster in the Conejo Valley in 1875. The post office was near their house which was located at the current location of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. E.S. Newbury purchased 2,200 acres of land in 1874, which stretched from today's old town Thousand Oaks and into Hidden Valley in southern Newbury Park. In the 1870s, Egbert S. Newbury and his wife Fannie moved full-time to their ranch in Conejo Valley which they named "Newbury Park" because the land looked so