Two Oxnard sites with ties to Cesar Chavez could become part of a future network of historic locations commemorating the farm labor movement.

The National Park Service this month published a draft study after evaluating about 100 possible sites linked with Chavez and outlining options for including them in a national historic park, trail or network.

One is a home on Wright Road in the El Rio neighborhood, northwest of Highway 101 and Rose Avenue, where Chavez lived with his family in the late 1950s while working as an advocate for local farmworkers.

The second is a former office of the National Farm Workers Association — which later became United Farm Workers — on Cooper Road, east of Garfield Avenue in the La Colonia neighborhood. The Oxnard office opened in 1966, the year of a historic march from Delano to Sacramento.

Martha Crusius, the Park Service’s program manager for the effort, was in Oxnard Wednesday night for a public meeting, one of eight being held in California and Arizona to gather input before public comment on the study closes Nov. 14.

A previous meeting held in Oxnard in May drew about 20 people, but just one showed up for Wednesday’s session.

Still, Crusius went through her presentation and the attendee, Luis Moreno — who is completing his doctorate on Mexican labor issues on the Oxnard Plain at Michigan State University — offered observations that were recorded by Park Service staff.

When Chavez lived in Oxnard in 1958 and 1959, Moreno said, he was working for a civil rights group, the Community Service Organization, often going to house meetings in the La Colonia area.

Chavez visited other people’s homes more often than he received visitors, Moreno told Park Service staffers, adding he wondered why CSO locations weren’t included as possible sites.

"I see Oxnard and Ventura County really shaping his understanding and importance of why he should get involved in organizing farm workers," Moreno said Friday.

The draft study outlines Chavez’s time in Oxnard, where in 1958 he launched a CSO chapter at the request of a packing house union that put up $20,000. Chavez learned the federal Bracero Program, meant to ease labor shortages by bringing in Mexican workers, was being used to deny jobs to longtime Oxnard workers.

His successful Oxnard efforts — boycotts, sit-down field strikes, marches — led to an agreement with growers to hire at the CSO office, "which became a model for the hiring halls created by the United Farm Workers the following decade," according to the study.

Chavez also spent part of his youth in Oxnard, one of many places he lived as part of a migrant family, and worked in local fields.

The Park Service studied historic sites with help from CSU Fullerton’s Center for Oral and Public History.

The Oxnard sites are among two dozen locations in California and Arizona that appear eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. Eleven other sites might meet the higher threshold of National Historic Landmark criteria but need more study.

Five sites — four in the Central Valley and one in Arizona — were found to be nationally significant, with the Forty Acres site in Delano having already been designated a National Historic Landmark in 2008.

The study describes five options, from doing nothing to establishing a national historical park that could include a network of sites.

The Park Service, which like other agencies is facing a lean budget, isn’t looking to buy properties, Crusius said. Instead, they hope to work with partners, from foundations and nonprofits to local preservationists, by providing technical and educational assistance.

"No new parks are getting the kind of money Yosemite and Yellowstone get these days," Crusius said.

One alternative would involve no dedicated Park Service staff but would provide administrative support and matching grants, which is how the agency currently coordinates a network of Underground Railroad sites across many states. Annual costs are estimated at $400,000 to $600,000.

At the other end of the spectrum, the agency could bring the Forty Acres site into the national park system, complete with park rangers and a visitors center, which could cost an estimated $1 million to $3 million annually.

Crusius said the study is scheduled to be sent to National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis by mid-December, then to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar before it goes to Congress for possible action.

On Friday, UFW announced plans to celebrate the organization’s 50th anniversary in 2012.

You can download the study and submit comments before Nov. 14 at http://www.nps.gov/pwro/chavez.