Our History

The Moorpark Women’s Fortnightly Club (MWFC) is one of the oldest women’s service organizations in Ventura County.

Our club was established in 1905, one year after the railroad came to town, to provide local women with the opportunity to visit and share with each other, which was so important in a tiny town where news arrived on foot, horseback or the morning train.

In fact, the MWFC was instrumental to the growth of the city of Moorpark. Our club’s origins began with a small group of women meeting every two weeks for tea and talk. According to one history of the city, “They drove their nice gentle horses and rode in very comfortable black buggies down the east-west pepper-shaded road and through the pine-shaded north-south road.”*

At one of the meetings, Agnes Smith, daughter of a local pastor, suggested forming a women’s club and so was born the then-named Women’s Fortnightly Club, so called for their bi-monthly meetings. The next step was building a clubhouse and, with donated land on Charles Street in Moorpark, the women threw out a wide net and raised funds from throughout Ventura County.

The original clubhouse, built in 1912, also served as the first library and the first high school in town. This set the pattern of ongoing support for the town of Moorpark, its schools and library. To this day, we raise thousands of dollars each year, focusing our donations on charities benefitting the immediate community.

Our club affiliated with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and the California Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1924, becoming the sixth club to do so in Ventura Country. Membership in our club guarantees membership in these umbrella organizations, as well as the regional Tierra Adorada District.

Over the years, the MWFC has developed the reputation for getting things done. Our members have always been generous with their talents, time and efforts in fundraising projects.

That is a tradition that remains unchanged. As a history of Moorpark put it, “When the members were called upon to undertake certain activities, they accomplished what they set out to do and thereby benefitted not only their club and community, but enhanced the brightness of their valley.”*

*”A Diamond for Moorpark,” by Norma Gunter