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Our Valley Then and Now
By Jonathon Freeman-Anderson
The Valley's rich history is a dramatic tapestry of novelty and intrigue featuring a story as tragically heroic as a blockbuster film and unavoidably human as valley residents today. Detailing from the valley's roots through to lasting relics and an unimaginable population boom, Valley Scene presents a comprehensive exploration from then to now. Primarily due to the availability of water throughout the various valleys in California, the consistently growing and changing landscape of the San Fernando Valley has thrived with various cultures for 7,000 years. Only within the last 200 years, however, has the Valley taken shape through ranching, and massive fruit orchards successfully flourishing, yielding, and failing with the oncoming growth of mass civilization to become what it is today.
There is no American comparison to the San Fernando Valley. Five ranges of mountains surround a massive basin that could hold all of San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Most Valley residents are from Los Angeles. However, many will admit, that though geography and climate separates the city of angels from the Valley, it's the tradition and style that truly separates us from the metropolis over the hill. The valley's history features a colorful range of evolution from outlaws during the Wild West to battling armies during the Spanish-American war to the advancement of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz reshaping it as the nesting ground for the entertainment capitol of the world. World-renown, the valley is home to Disney, ABC, Universal, and Warner Bros., amongst countless more entertainment professionals employed, owning, or establishing new entertainment businesses every day.
The Valley today is the multi-cultural melting pot for Los Angeles. Consistently growing, more commuters travel in and out of the valley over a myriad web of freeways, highways, and canyon roads than anywhere else in the world. For a small, but fascinating look into the Valley's recent cultural developments check out the museum of the San Fernando Valley on Burbank at Valley College. In recent history, the Valley's identity was brought to question as a vote to secede from Los Angeles into its own exclusive city. If passed, the city would be the fifth largest in the country, dropping L.A. to number three. The new city, if created, could have been called such ridiculous names as Valley City or Camelot, and some less incredible ideas as San Fernando City or Mission City. The proposal lost across L.A. county, but residents of the Valley itself voted a narrow majority to break away from the resource-leeching, poverty-stricken Los Angeles city.
The Valley's street topography has an interesting, north to south, alphabetical feature for most major lights. If heading south, after Rinaldi, starting at Chatsworth, every major street goes in subsequent order down the alphabet. This may be entirely coincidental, but for visiting guests or merely ambiguous locals, pay attention as the streets change. After Chatsworth, come Devonshire, Lassen, Nordhoff, Parthenia, Roscoe, Saticoy, Sherman Way, Vanowen, and Victory, start over with Burbank, Magnolia, Ventura.
In 2009, the Valley's population of 1.7 million is more than live in a dozen states as well as the most diverse mix of ethnicity in the U.S. Of the population Latinos and non-Hispanic whites are nearly even in numbers, 3.4% are African Americans and 10.1% are Asian. The largest cities in the valley are Glendale and Burbank with the most populous districts of Los Angeles located in the Valley within North Hollywood and Van Nuys. All four locations have more than 100,000 residents apiece. Despite the San Fernando Valley's reputation for sprawling, low-density development, the Valley communities of Panorama City, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Reseda, Canoga Park, and Northridge, all in Los Angeles, have numerous apartment complexes and contain some of the densest housing tracts in Los Angeles. In general, communities in the northeastern, central, and southeastern parts of the Valley are primarily Latino, while the majority of the white community lives along the region's mountain rim and in the northwestern and southern sections of the valley. The city of Glendale has a large and influential Armenian community. Asian-Americans, especially large Korean, Thai, and Indian communities, live throughout the Valley, but are most numerous in the city of Glendale and Chatsworth, Panorama City, Porter Ranch, and Granada Hills. African-Americans live mainly in Lake View Terrace, Pacoima, Reseda, Valley Village, Van Nuys, and Northridge. Another large ethnic element is the Iranian community with 200,000 people living mainly in west San Fernando Valley, as well as, the valley being home to a very large, sprawled, and influential Jewish community. Poverty rates in the San Fernando Valley are lower than the rest of the county (15.3% compared to 17.9%). Many wealthy families live south of Ventura Boulevard, creating the popular phrase "South of the Boulevard" as a buzzword in the local real estate industry. All of these statistics come from the 2008 San Fernando Valley Census Report.
Debatably the most influential man in the Valley's history, William Mulholland, a self-taught engineer, transformed the valley, a desert, with sprinklers, pipes, and public waterworks into what it is today. In 1913, Mulholland built the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct taking water from the Eastern Sierra's Owens Valley in Central California through 164 tunnels. When water reached the reservoir in the San Fernando Valley, Mulholland said, "There it is. Take it." The waterway gave L.A. a steady water supply and in 1915 most of the Valley towns voted for annexation into the city to take advantage of the waterfall bounty. By 1928, the aqueduct subsequently drained the 100-square-mile Owens Lake absolutely dry starting the California Water Wars, which was fictionalized for the basis of the film, Chinatown. The water gave success to dusty, desert landowners and sent a thousand plus farms into a thriving harvest. From hope of rain and depleted grasslands for wheat and cattle ranchers into booming farms with beets and lima beans, lemons, walnuts, grapes, and tomatoes became, for a while, the Valley's image.
The changing landscape became lush. It became all too clear, to the landowners, that who ever controls the water supply can control the people. Gaining water rights undercut the Owens Valley farmers and they resisted violently by dynamiting the aqueduct at Jawbone Canyon in 1924. By opening the Alabama gates and diverting the flow of water for four days, raising prices, Los Angeles was forced to negotiate. Mulholland was quoted as saying, [he] "half-regretted the demise of so many of the valley's orchard trees, because now there were no longer enough trees to hang all the troublemakers who live there."
Today, there is an example of what the Valley terrain looked like 200 years ago, before wheat fields or orange trees at the new Michael D. Antonovich Regional Park. The park is open to use the rolling foothills of upper Browns Canyon above Chatsworth on what used to be called the Joughin Ranch. The park offers stunning vistas, rolling hills, oak and walnut woodland, water sources, and an abundance of wildlife. Throughout the park majestic views of the San Fernando Valley, the Santa Monica, Totopa, and Santa Susana Mountains, and the Simi Hills abound. Part of a key watershed area for the Los Angeles River, the Antonovich Park encompasses the Headwaters of Devil, Ybarra, and Browns Canyons. These canyons contain extensive oak and walnut woodland with year-round surface water. The rolling topography of the park includes grasslands, woodlands of oak, ash, walnut, sycamore and some big-cone Douglas fir.
The Valley is a commuter culture. With many transit options cut off to the Valley in the early 20th century, similar to the freeway subplot in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" by GM buying up trolley cars that once ran from downtown to the valley and building freeways instead, the Valley has had the automobile thrust upon it as a cultural staple. Everyone drives everywhere, creating extensive traffic jams on streets that were once dirt-farm lanes. The Valley's car obsession propped eight drive-in theaters up to run shows nightly at dusk. They were the Pickwick, Victory, San Val, and Laurel in the East Valley, with the Sepulveda, Van Nuys, Reseda, and Canoga in the west. Like the film, "American Graffiti," many teens cruise the valley streets, especially Van Nuys Boulevard in the heart. For 50 years on Club Night, every Wednesday, it could take more than an hour to drive through Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks. A police crackdown in the 1980s ended a tradition that dated to the 1930s.
Driving by Plummer/Reseda or Plummer/Corbin and at other various locations throughout the Valley look for the cold war relic air sirens. Despite many actual nuclear warheads facing away from Los Angeles towards the Valley under the Sepulveda Reservoir to defy a looming cold war nuclear attack, the Valley is the birthplace of many spy planes and secret, military technology. Nike missile batteries were visible along Victory Boulevard, Oat Mountain above Chatsworth, off Mulholland, and on the opposite side between the Santa Clarita and San Fernando Valleys. From the Burbank Airport within the secret Skunk Works, Lockheed conceived and tested the U2 spy plane along with many other "classified" planes. In the 50s and 60s residents demanded the government install warning sirens after concurrent sonic booms shattered windows on a regular basis from the test flights.
On the west side of the Valley bordering Simi Valley, awkward colors, and loud roars used to permeate above the Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Lab. Used for experiments with nuclear reactors, the Santa Susana Field Lab created the third largest nuclear disaster in history, behind Chernobyl in the Ukraine, and Windscale in the UK. Those incidents are the top three releasers of radioactive iodine in nuclear power history, but the event went largely unnoticed and land developers created swaths of tract housing throughout the damaged Simi Valley landscape despite the meltdown. The Boeing-Rocketdyne Nuclear Facility, also referred to as the Santa Susana Field Lab, is located about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles near Simi Valley. In 1959, a clogged coolant channel in a 20-megawatt nuclear reactor lead to the melting of 30% of the fuel elements in the reactor core. Radioactive iodine was released up to 100 times more than that of the Three Mile Island disaster, enough to cause various types of cancers. Radioactive iodine only has an eight-day half-life, but it's still more than enough to get into local dairy cows and contaminate milk supply. The facility released many other radioactive materials over many years. After an eight-year-long court battle more than 100 local residents reached a settlement with Boeing-Rocketdyne effectively closing much of the facility.
From tragedy to tradition, Cal State University, Northridge is home to the oldest Valley orange grove. With over six acres of orange trees, CSUN tends and treats them sacredly as the last remaining example of the Valley's rich agricultural past. The campus is also famous for protests against the Vietnam War. Late in 1968, black students upset at their campus treatment, forcibly occupied the administration building in San Fernando Valley State College (later Cal State University, Northridge.) The following summer, two months before the more famous Woodstock, multiple thousands of rock and roll fans descended on Devonshire Downs, one block north of today's campus, for the raucous Newport '69 festival.
Before Vietnam, the Valley was the nation's fastest growing region. To drive real estate sales magazines and radio programs hyped the valley as "the place to be." The population doubled by 1950, and again by 1960. Families rose, quickly increasing the humble population of 3,000 to 21,000 across the plain of the Valley, moving, as today, progressively out and over the Valley destroying much of the agriculture for residential neighborhoods.
This real estate boom in cozy San Fernando Valley motivated a national change in American perspective by including a third option for residents beyond urban or rural, now there was suburban. As a shining stereotype of 1950s, early 60s nostalgia, the San Fernando Valley became the nation's leading symbol of suburbia by creating more swimming pools and buying more sports cars than anywhere else in the country. Acres of the ranching culture began to be squeezed into smaller corners of the Valley, suburban homeowners complained of tractor dust, and crowing roosters to the point that ranchers sold every piece of the Valley off to real estate and strip mall entrepreneurs.
World War II turned many of the Valley's farms into airplane plants creating new homes by the thousands. Lockheed evolved into one of the war effort's most prolific assemblers of bombers and fighters becoming the Valley's biggest employer. In 1944, the Army opened Birmingham Hospital for war wounded on Vanowen Street in Van Nuys. The sprawling hospital held more than 1,000 maimed troops. That year, Bing Crosby's hit song "San Fernando Valley," from a movie of the same name, starring Roy Rogers made the Valley sound so nice to GIs trapped overseas that the population swelled to 176,000 during the war.
The Valley is also ensconced in fame due to the arrival of the film industry. The varied terrain and predictable weather inspired Cinema legends to discover the Valley to shoot many early movies there. Around studios like Universal, Warner Brothers, a movie colony grew. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby golfed around in Toluca Lake, Clark Gable and Al Jolson enjoyed Encino, while the stars who favored the ranch life established themselves in what would become today's multi-million dollar homes including James Cagney, Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Reagan, Lucille Ball, and Desi Arnaz among others. The presence of all these celebrities and their good life painted a paradise image of the Valley.
L.A. Times owner Harrision Gray Otis and his son-in-law Harry Chandler paid $53 an acre for 47,500 acres in the south half of the Valley in 1909 creating the biggest land deal in Los Angeles history. They built more towns. First Van Nuys, then Reseda, and finally, Owensmouth, which is now Canoga Park and West Hills. All were linked to Los Angeles by Pacific Electric Red trolley cars and to each other by Sherman Way. The towns of Zelzah and Roscoe became Northridge and Sun Valley. In 1912, the Valley's first airfield opened on a corner of Griffith Park, where the Los Angeles Zoo is located today.
In the 1880s and '90s, beyond San Fernando, Burbank, Glendale, Pacoima, Calabasas and Chatsworth Park opened and fortuned with abundant ground water, allowing peach growing to prosper as Italian immigrant, C.J. Rinaldi, cultivated orange groves west of San Fernando. Soon, thereafter, Automobiles showed up in the Valley in 1898.
The Valley is a multicultural epicenter of expression and prosperity. Though the pun is obvious, beyond earthquakes, the only threat to the security of the Valley's reputation is a better version. The Valley's evolution for stronger, greater bonds and cultural evolution is known as a true base for the statistic that Los Angeles and the Valley is always five years ahead of the curve for the rest of popular American society.
The world depends on the consistent survival and expression of the Valley. This is the center of popular American communication for entertainment. From the Valley and Los Angeles there is literally nothing that can destroy the essence of the American dream for overnight success and influential variety to be everything that the U.S., as a people, understands as its core. The Valley represents the epitome of America's popular standard. Valley Scene is proud to be a part of this rich, cultured history and hopes all the readers will do their part to cherish, honor, and preserve the Valley for what it was, is, and will be, for generations. Do as the original settlers of this amazing community and set a precedent for the Valley's future. Thank you.