San Fernando Valley, California

Agriculture, Gathering and Extractive Industries
Home | Introduction | Physical Features | Settlement Patterns before 1950 | Population Geographies since 1950 | Political Geography | Agriculture, Gathering and Extractive Industries | Industrial and Commercial Organization | Transportation & Communication System | Cities | Neighborhoods | Recreational Resources | Human Impact on the Environment | Culture Regions | About Me

wheat.jpg

San Fernando Valley --- Wheat Empire & Peach Country

In the 1880s and '90s, more towns opened and joined San Fernando on the map. Burbank, Glendale, Pacoima, Calabasas and Chatsworth Park opened. Some names didn't last: Dundee, Monte Vista, and Oat Hills. The town of Toluca, later renamed Lankershim and then North Hollywood, came to life on the eastern reach of the original Isaac Lankershim wheat empire. Blessed with deep loam and abundant ground water, the area was great for peach growing and prospered.

The Valley began to attract more settlers. An Italian immigrant, C.J. Rinaldi, cultivated orange groves west of San Fernando, which grew large enough that the town built itself a high school. The Southern Pacific added a second railroad diagonally across the Valley floor from Burbank to Chatsworth that became the coastal route up California. Automobiles showed up in 1898.

By the start of the 20th century, the Valley was still scantly populated: fewer than 3,000 people on a plain of more than 200 square miles. That would soon change.

Watering the plain


Nothing altered the Valley's future like the opening on Nov. 5, 1913 of an aqueduct between the Eastern Sierra's Owens Valley and a reservoir west of San Fernando. The waterway designed by William Mulholland transformed a parched region into an irrigated greenbelt. Mainly, it ensured Los Angeles a steady water supply. To partake of the bounty most of the towns in the Valley voted in 1915 to join the city of Los Angeles. The vote for annexation was a lopsided 681-25.

The water not only let towns flourish — and made a success of the subdividers like Chandler whose land exploded in value — it let a thousand farms bloom. Instead of wheat and cattle that depended on the vagaries of the weather, the Valley began to grow beets and lima beans, lemons and walnuts, grapes and tomatoes.
The Valley's image changed as the landscape turned lush and verdant. It became a lure and by 1920 had swelled to 21,000 residents.

citrus.jpg

San Fernando Valley has come a long way since the beginning of the 20th century when its fertile ground not only nourished the development of California's citrus industry, but also the state's fledgling movie and aviation industries.
 
Today, the San Fernando Valley has grown into the world's center for entertainment and major supplier for aerospace and defense-related technologies, financial services, health care and high-tech manufacturing.

wheat2.jpg

For much of the 19th century the valley was used for livestock and wheat production. With the coming of the railroad in 1874, land prices began to increase, and real estate development began in earnest in the 1880s. When water was brought in by pipeline from the Sierra Nevada in 1913, the valley's pastoral setting began to give way to a more urban and suburban environment, spawning the cities of Burbank, Glendale, and San Fernando, and the unincorporated neighborhoods of Encino, Tarzana, Northridge, Chatsworth, and Sherman Oaks. In 1915, the city of Los Angeles annexed the entire San Fernando Valley, with the exception of Burbank, Glendale, and San Fernando.