3 Weather

The Valley shares Los Angeles's dry, sunny weather, but is usually hotter and has more smog.

4 History

The Valley's first known inhabitants were the Native American Tongva, later called Gabrieleno. The Mission San Fernando Rey de España was founded September 8, 1797 by Spanish Padre Fermin Francisco de Lasuén, and most of the Valley's land was granted to the Mission. The Tongva were attached to the Mission, and mostly forced to abandon their villages and religion to live and work at the Mission. The Valley, together with the rest of California, was part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the El Camino Real, the road connecting California's Spanish missions, ran through the Valley, approximately along the route of Ventura Boulevard. California became part of Mexico upon its independence from Spain in 1821, and the former Mission lands were granted to Mexican families. California became part of the United States in 1850.

During the Spanish, Mexican, and early American periods, the Valley was lightly populated, and its main occupations were dry wheat farming and ranching. Because of the lack of water in the summer, more intensive forms of agriculture weren't feasible. All of that changed in 1913, when the City of Los Angeles built the Los Angeles Aqueduct to bring water from the Owens Valley. The Valley, although mostly rural, was annexed to the city of Los Angeles, and the irrigation water provided by the aqueduct allowed the Valley to become one of the most productive agricutural regions in the world, with orchards, including citrus, and truck farming.

The agricultural boom ended as the Valley urbanized. The southeast and central portion of the Valley was developed as streetcar suburbs after 1920, and subdivision of the valley's farms and orchards into housing tracts accelerated after the end of the Second World War. Most of the Valley floor, including the west Valley and north Valley, was developed in the 1950-1960 period. After 1960, the construction industry began to use larger earthmoving equipment that facilitated tract home development on hillsides, and subdivisions began to climb higher into the Santa Susana, Santa Monica, and Verdugo Mountains and the Simi Hills. The enormous Porter Ranch development on the southern slopes of the Santa Susana Mountains is the Valley's largest hillside development, and further phases of the development are under construction or planned.

Before the 1960s, it was the unspoken custom of Valley realtors not to sell homes to African-Americans, then living mostly in the Los Angeles basin. After the Civil Rights movement took hold, this custom faded.

5 Transportation

Although the Valley is part of Los Angeles, its development pattern is almost exclusively suburban, and the automobile is the dominant mode of transport. Several freeways criss-cross the Valley. Despite the dominance of the automobile, the Valley has two subway stations, in Universal City and North Hollywood, which opened in 2000 as an extension of the Metro Red Line Subway connecting the Valley to Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles. An east-west Bus Rapid Transit line is under construction in mid-2004, which will connect the North Hollywood Metro station to Warner Center in the west Valley. Two commuter rail lines connect the Valley to downtown Los Angeles, and an express bus line operates on Ventura Boulevard, with more express bus lines being planned for other routes across the Valley.

6 Parks and Recreation

In the past decade, many large tracts of undeveloped or ranch lands in the mountains surrounding the Valley have been acquired for parkland. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and its affiliated agencies have purchased or otherwise acquired many of these lands, which are maintained as parkland by the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area , California state parks, or local parks districts. In 2003 the Ahmanson Ranch , a 2,983 acre (12 km²) property in Ventura County at the west end of the Valley, was purchased by the State of California, and dedicated as the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve on April 10, 2004.

7 Secession

In 2002, Los Angeles residents defeated a proposal under which the Valley would have seceded from the City of Los Angeles. Opponents claimed that secession was motivated by racist and class-based factors, despite the fact that the ethnic composition of the Valley does not much differ from the rest of the city (other than having a somewhat smaller African-American population), and the Valley suffers from the same problems of poverty, crime, drug and gang activity as the rest of the city. Proponents cited studies showing that over $400M per year of tax revenue is siphoned out of the Valley by the city. The proposal passed with a slight majority in the Valley despite a heavily-funded campaign against it led by Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn. A city-wide majority was not obtained, however.

8 Movies In The Valley

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Valley Girl (1983), Safe (1995) Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Two Days In The Valley (1996), The Karate Kid (1984), and its sequels were all filmed and set in the Valley. (See also: List of movies set in Los Angeles). The alleged lifestyles of Valley teens in the 1980s, and their alleged slang ( Valspeak ), were satirized in the Moon Unit Zappa (daughter of Frank Zappa) song "Valley Girl" (Example: " Like, grody to the max!") Bing Crosby had a #1 hit in 1944 called "The San Fernando Valley" written by Gordon Jenkins.

9 Glossary of Valspeak

Valspeak	English
Airhead	An intellectual lightweight (e.g. a Valley Girl).
Awesome	Not quite "tubular"
Barf bag	Jerk
Fer sure!	Certainly.
Gag me with a spoon!	That's disgusting.
Gnarly	Good
Grody	Disgusting (e.g. "grody to the max")
I'm so sure!	I don't believe you.
Joanie	Unhip girl (from the Joanie Cunningham character on Happy Days)
Like, Omigod!	I'm surprised.
Psych!	Just kidding
Rad	Very cool
Sketchy	Bad
To the max	More of the previous adjective (e.g. "grody to the max")
Totally	Completely
Tubular	Awesomely cool
UVs	Sunshine. ("I'm heading down to the beach to get some UVs.")
Val	Valley Girl
Veg (out)	To rest.

10 External Links

• The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb
• "Valspeak" translator

Geography of California

Antelope Valley | Central Valley | Central Coast | Channel Islands | Coast Ranges | Death Valley | Gold Country | Greater Los Angeles | Imperial Valley | Inland Empire | Mojave | Napa Valley | Northern California | Owens Valley | Pomona Valley | Redwood Empire | San Fernando Valley | San Francisco Bay Area | The Peninsula | San Gabriel Valley | Santa Clara Valley | Santa Clarita Valley | Shasta Cascade | Sierra Nevada | Silicon Valley | Southern California | Wine Country

Los Angeles County regions California valleys

<Hide>