Ventura Pier was built in 1872 as a commercial wharf and reached its heyday from 1872 to 1914, shipping wheat, citrus, lima beans, seaweed, cattle, pigs, and crude oil while receiving lumber, bricks, and cement. Its original construction cost $45,000 and took five months, from March 2 to October 5, 1872, and Arcadia Camarillo dedicated the first piling on May 18, 1872, by breaking a bottle of California wine over it. The pier has served many uses, including restaurants such as Seaview Caf, Pier Fish House, and Eric Ericssons Fish Co., and formerly housed the Ventura County Boat Club, Sea Scouts, Coast Guard Auxiliary, and Civil Air Patrol. Thousands attended major celebrations there for Navy Day in 1936 and for the pier reopening in 1993. The structure has changed repeatedly: it measured 1,200 feet in 1872, reached 1,958 feet in 1938, and measured 1,600 feet in 2001, with a width ranging from 25 feet 6 inches to 67 feet 8 inches and water depth at the end of 23 feet at 0 tide. Built with Douglas Fir and earlier eucalyptus pilings, it has used steam and hydraulic pile drivers, and its 529 total pilings include 439 timber pilings and 90 steel pilings. The deck is made of Douglas Fir with 4,285 timber planks, rises gradually 4 feet at the end, and stands 25.2 feet above the water at the start and 29.2 feet at the end at 0 tide. The pier has faced continual threats from fire, ships, storm waves, beach erosion, shipworms, and gribbles, and has been wholly or partly destroyed in 1877, 1926, 1935, 1937, 1949, 1969, 1983, and 1997. It was reconstructed six times, in 1878, 1928, 1936, 1938, 1993, and 2000; the 2000 reconstruction cost $2.2 million and took nine months, from August 1, 1999, to March 31, 2000. Ship collisions included the SS Coos Bay in 1914, and the SS W.L. Hardison, the world's first oil tanker, burned at the pier in 1889. The last cargo unloaded there was lumber in 1940, and the end of the pier was dedicated as Mills End to Don and Edna Mills on April 1, 2000.