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Many of the visitors who jam-pack Oxnard's Strawberry Festival come from outside Ventura County
They'll come from afar to taste an Oxnard strawberry. A random sampling of about 2,800 visitors to last year's California Strawberry Festival in Oxnard showed that about two out of every three people came from outside Ventura County. The ZIP-code survey also showed visitors from 20 other states -- including Delaware, Texas and South Carolina -- as well as three foreign countries.
Chats with attendees on the grounds also indicated that some out-of-state folks make it a point to dig into a strawberry dish in Oxnard during their travels, said Charlotte O'Brien, the festival's manager.
"Some people actually start their vacations with us, then continue on through California," O'Brien said. "It's a big draw to many people."
Big enough to have a few growing pains, the Oxnard event is one of the oldest, largest and most popular strawberry festivals in California, observers say.
The survey numbers also suggest that the Strawberry Festival gets more out-of-county business than other large local celebrations. Officials connected with the Point Mugu Air Show, the Ventura County Fair and the recently completed Conejo Valley Days all indicated that they draw primarily from here and surrounding counties.
O'Brien stressed that the survey was not scientific and represented only a small portion of the 69,000-plus people who went to last year's event. Still, she said the ratio of out-of-county visitors "is a significant number." On the flip side, O'Brien said, those numbers also point up something else; she wants to boost the number of in-county people who attend the 21st annual Strawberry Festival this weekend at College Park in Oxnard.
One of every three...