This presentation tells the story of the development of the Port of Hueneme–beginning in 1865 with Thomas Bard’s vision of a wharf capable of shipping out all the crops harvested by local farmers.
Central to this story are not only the ups and downs of the wharf through two generations, but also the dream of a thriving port in the sleepy little town of Hueneme that the father, Thomas, passed on to his son, Richard. Richard Bard’s struggle to build the port, though, was finally realized, despite considerable opposition, controversy and a World War.

Connie Korenstein is a retired educator who devotes her time to historic research, tours, living history presentations, historic fashion consulting, and community events. She has a collection of historical characters that she has researched and portrays in costume, sometimes solo and sometimes with a cast of other characters. Connie is a docent at Heritage Square and the Channel Islands Maritime Museum in Oxnard, as well as the Dudley House in Ventura. She has also been trained to guide tours at the Bard Mansion.

Historical Archaeologist Linda Bentz, who researches Chinese fishermen, California-built Chinese junks as well as Chinese American women and families, researched and wrote the script for the documentary Courage and Contributions: the Chinese in Ventura County. She has also published scholarly essays in books, journals, and newsletters.

In 2012, she and co-author William Gow completed Hidden Lives: A Century of Chinese American History in Ventura County. She is currently the Vice President of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California and serves as the historian for the Ventura County Chinese American Historical Society.
She also has extensively investigated the presence of Chinese abalone harvesters on the Channel Islands by working with the National Parks Service and the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

Mrs. Bentz is the mother of four sons and lives with her husband in San Pedro.

Wayne Dey, who grew up in a small town in Minnesota, learned firsthand about two pieces of evidence that seem to support the theory that Vikings sailed to North America during the 14^th Century.

The first piece of evidence is the Kensington Runestone, a 202-pound slab of greywacke covered in runes or carved words on its face and side.  The rune inscription purports to be a record left behind by Scandinavian explorers that has been internally dated to the year 1362.  Olof Ohman, a Swedish immigrant, said that he found the stone late in 1898 while he was clearing land recently acquired of the largely rural township of Solem, Minnesota.  He decided to name the runestone after Kensington, the nearest big settlement in Minnesota.  A long, drawn-out debate on the runestone’s authenticity is still going on.

 The second piece of evidence is the 76-foot-long exact replica of a Viking dragon ship built by Robert Asp, a junior high school guidance counselor, who just couldn’t let go of the idea that Norsemen set foot in North America long before any Europeans.  He planned to prove it by sailing such a ship from Duluth to Norway.  In order to realize his goal, he studied both Viking history and ship design before hand-building the “Hjemkomst” in a potato warehouse. The seaworthy replica was modeled after a 9th Century burial ship pulled from a funerary mound in Norway.

Asp managed to sail his completed dragon ship on Lake Superior, but he died of leukemia in 1980 before completing his bucket list dream. Two years later, family members and friends proved the ship could go the distance by sailing the “Hjemkomst” from Duluth to Bergen, Norway in 72 days.  The ship now resides at the Heritage-Hjemkomst Interpretive Center in Moorhead, Minnesota.