Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village

Tressa Prisbrey began building here in 1956 to house a collection of 17,000 pencils, using bottles she hauled from the dump because concrete blocks cost too much; she outlived six of her seven children. The state bronze says she worked for twenty-five years, and the county plaque set beside it in the same stone says she finished in 1965. She left in 1982 and died in 1988, and the Northridge earthquake of 1994 brought much of the village down. The Preserve Bottle Village committee still works on what stands.

What the plaque says

Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village This fantastic assemblage is one of California's remarkable Twentieth Century Folk Art Environments. In 1956 Tressa Prisbrey, then nearly 60 years old, started building a fanciful "village" of shrines, walkways, sculptures, and buildings from recycled items and discards from the local dump. She worked for 25 years creating one structure after another to house her collections. Today, Bottle Village is composed of 13 buildings and 20 sculptures. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 939 Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with Preserve Bottle Village, July 21, 1984. Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village Created entirely from discarded objects, Bottle Village is the first folk-art environment in the county to be recognized as a State Historical Landmark. Grandma Prisbrey began the village in 1956 at the age of 61 and completed it in 1965. Her creation demonstrates to us the wisdom and creativity of our elders. Ventura County Landmark No. 52

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mentryville and Pico Canyon — 8.8 mi
  A company town in a canyon, and a mile and a half further up the road, the well that started the California oil industry.
• Leonis Adobe — 9.2 mi
  Miguel Leonis left his estate to relatives in France and called Espíritu Chijulla his housekeeper; she spent sixteen years proving in court that she was his wife.
• The Cascades — 12 mi
  The concrete chute where the Los Angeles Aqueduct arrives, and where forty thousand people watched the Owens Valley come south in 1913.
• Pioneer Oil Refinery — 12 mi
  The first commercially successful refinery in the West, built in 1876 to take the crude coming down the pipeline from Pico Canyon.

More markers nearby

• Rancho Simi — 5.5 mi
• Chatsworth Calera Site — 5.6 mi
• Well, CSO 4 (Pico 4) — 7.6 mi
• Mentryville — 8.8 mi