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- How did the city of San Fernando get its name?
- What can you tell me about the early history of
San Fernando?
- What is the history of San Fernando's
incorporation as a city?
- Where can I find old photographs of the San
Fernando area?
- What role did agriculture play in San Fernando's
history?
- What was the connection between the arrival of
railroads in San Fernando and the community's founding, growth and
development?
- What can you tell me about the history of the San
Fernando Mission?
- What can you tell me about the early Native
Americans who lived in the area that is now San Fernando?
- Who were Geronimo and Catalina Lopez and what is
the connection between their Lopez Adobe home and San Fernando's past?
- What is the relationship between the Owens
Valley Aqueduct and the development of the San Fernando Valley?
- What can you tell me about Ritchie Valens and
his connection to San Fernando?
1. How did the city of San
Fernando get its name?
San
Fernando was named after the valley in which it is located, "El Valle
de San Fernando." The valley was named by the founders of the San
Fernando Mission. The mission, the seventeenth to be established in
California, was named in honor of King Ferdinand III, the thirteenth
king of Castile and Leon in Spain. For almost a decade before the
mission was established in 1797, Spanish explorers who first came
through the area called the valley "El Valle de Santa Catalina de
Bononia de los Encinos," which means The Valley of St. Catherine of
Bononia of the Live Oaks. Prior to the arrival of white explorers, the
native Tataviam Indians called the area Achois Comihabit. More
information about the naming of San Fernando can be found in the
following
sources:
Print
Sources:
Top of Page
2. What can you tell me
about the early history of San Fernando?
San Fernando's
first inhabitants were Gabrielino and Tataviam Indians. The first
Spanish explorers came through the valley in 1769, led by Gaspar de
Portolá on an expedition from San Diego to Monterey the same
year that Spain first occupied California. Though a priest named
Francisco Garcés crossed the upper part of the valley in
1776, the area near what is now San Fernando really became settled
after a party in 1797 went in search of a new mission on the way to the
San Gabriel Mission. They chose a site that Tataviam Indians called
Achois Comihabit and that was being run as a ranch by Francisco Reyes,
who gave up his interest in the property so the
newcomersFranciscan clergycould start the San
Fernando Mission, the seventeenth mission in the state of California.
The missionaries were drawn to the location because of its fertile
soil, abundant spring water for irrigation and drinking, pine longs and
limestone from the San Gabriel Mountains for building materials, and a
Native American population that could be converted to Christianity and
used for labor. Mission founders held their first baptismal ceremonies
September 8, 1797, and soon set up a vast irrigation network and
trained Native Americans in many trades and skills, as well as farming
and ranching techniques. By the early 1800s, the mission had become a
small but thriving center of trade where Native Americans bought and
sold fruits, vegetables, olives, wine, and livestock. The mission
flourished for nearly forty years, until a move during 1830s to
secularize California's missions shifted their administration from
Church to lay people. That change took place at the San Fernando
Mission in 1834 when Don Pedro Lopez was appointed mayordomo, the civil
administrator in charge of agricultural operations. The mission went
into decline even as gold prospectors and settlers started arriving
after gold was discovered in 1842 in nearby Placerita Canyon, and it
was abandoned around 1845.
In the 1860s
Lopez's daughter, Catalina, and her husband Geronimo settled on about
forty acres north of the mission and started the first non-religious
settlement in what would soon become the community of San Fernando,
building a school, post office, stagecoach stop, and home.
The following
decade, swept up in a land boom in Southern California, a group of
investors in 1874 bought property along a railway line that the
Southern Pacific Railway was building, started subdividing the land
into plots, and brought in prospective property owners from Los
Angeles. One of the investors,
Senator Charles Maclay, called the new community San Fernando. It was
the first city in the San Fernando Valley and was nicknamed "The
Mission City." More information about the early history of San Fernando
can be found in the following sources:
Website
Links:
Print
Sources:
- McGroarty,
John Steven, ed. History of Los Angeles County.
Volume I. Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, Inc.,
1923.
- Dace,
Catherine Hubbard Egbert. Early San Fernando: Memoirs.
Historical Society of Southern Calif., 1962.
- Smith,
Clifford M. The history of San Fernando Valley: With Special
Emphasis on the City of San Fernando. Masters Thesis.
University of Southern California, 1930.
- Loomis,
Derward P. San Fernando Retrospective: The First Fifty Years.
San Fernando, CA: San Fernando Heritage, 1985.
Images:
- First school house in the town
of San Fernando, c. 1880. Located at corner of San Fernando Road and
Mission.
[Courtesy of San Fernando Valley Historical Society]
- Packing house at Truman
Street and Maclay, c. 1900
[Courtesy of San Fernando Valley Historical Society]
Top of Page
3.
What is the history of San Fernando's incorporation as a city?
San
Fernando was founded in 1874 and grew into a community renowned for its
fruits and vegetables, especially citrus and olives. One of the reasons
for its plentiful production of crops was a reliable water supply from
several deep wells, which had originally fed the mission's irrigation
systems and that allowed San Fernando to maintain its municipal
independence as adjacent communities struggled to find sufficient water
to irrigate their crops. After the 250-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct opened
in 1913, bringing the waters of the Owens Valley to residents of Los
Angeles, many San Fernando Valley communities annexed to Los Angeles in
order to receive fixed water rates. Their collective rush to annex was
prompted by a campaign whose rallying cry was "Put the Aqueduct Water
to Work at Once." San Fernando's autonomy has made the city what one
writer called "an island in a sea of suburban Los Angeles." More
information about the incorporation of San Fernando as a city can be
found in the following sources:
Print
Sources:
- McGroarty,
John Steven, ed. History of Los Angeles County.
Volume I. Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, Inc.,
1923.
- Robinson,
W.W. The Story of San Fernando Valley. Los Angeles:
Title Insurance and Trust Company, 1961.
Top of Page
4. Where can I find old
photographs of the San Fernando area?
Photographs are
available from the San Fernando Valley Historical Society and the
Security Pacific Photograph Collection at the Los Angeles Public
Library.
Website
Links:
Places
to Visit:
- San
Fernando Valley Historical Society
10940 Sepulveda Boulevard
Mission Hills, CA 91340
(818) 365-7810
Images:
- Andres Pico Adobe in Mission
Hills, 2000. It was built in 1834 and a second-floor addition was built
in 1873.
[County of Los Angeles Public Library]
Top of Page
5. What role did
agriculture play in San Fernando's
history?
For about a half
century between San Fernando's 1874 founding and the 1920s, the
community was considered an "agricultural gem" set in the San Fernando
Valley, thanks to a double blessing. An ample and reliable water supply
was coupled with a coastal valley climate, in which the community's
elevation of about 1,100 feetalong with its receiving about 12
inches of rain a yearmade it ideal for growing crops. Though
cattle ranching was common in the area when missionaries arrived in the
late 1700s, by a century later the landscape was dotted with wheat
plantings and fruit trees, whose growth was also aided by the
irrigation systems in place from the Mission's heyday. By the 1920s,
with further assistance from the waters of the Los Angeles Aqueduct,
fruit and especially citrus cultivation was San Fernando's biggest
industry. The price of land for orange and lemon groves went as high as
$5,000 an acreas much as eight times more than the cost of
other landand the city had at least four packing houses with
annual shipments of nearly 500 rail cars of oranges and lemons. Olives
also flourished in the Mediterranean-like climate, and the 2,000-acre
Sylmar olive grovethen the world's largestproduced
50,000 gallons of olive oil and 200,000 gallons of ripe olives. Other
crops grown in and around San Fernando included alfalfa, apricots,
asparagus, barley hay, beans, beets, cabbage,
citrus, corn, lettuce, melons, peaches, potatoes, pumpkins, squash,
tomatoes, and walnuts. The area also had excellent dairy farms
includingduring the 1920sthe world's largest Guernsey
herd. San Fernando's agricultural output led to other industries such
as canning companies, a fruit growers' association, and fruit
preservers. Like most other communities in Southern California, San
Fernando's agricultural land gave way to development following World
War II. More information about agriculture and San Fernando can be
found in the following sources:
Print Sources:
- McGroarty, John Steven, ed. History of
Los Angeles County. Volume I. Chicago and New York: The
American Historical Society, Inc., 1923.
- Robinson, W.W. The Story of San Fernando
Valley. Los Angeles: Title Insurance and Trust Company, 1961.
|
 |
Images:
- San Fernando Heights Orange
Association packing house, c. 1920s
[Courtesy of San Fernando Valley Historical Society]
- Farm workers and a threshing
machine in the San Fernando Valley, c. 1912
[Courtesy of San Fernando Valley Historical Society]
- Farm workers and a threshing
machine, San Fernando Valley, c. 1912
[Courtesy of San Fernando Valley Historical Society]
Top of Page
6. What was the
connection between the arrival of railroads in San Fernando and the
community's founding, growth and development?
San Fernando
became a community as a result of the juxtaposition of Southern
California's land boom during the 1870s and the Southern Pacific
Railroad's construction of a rail line, during that same decade,
between Los Angeles and Bakersfield through Fremont Pass. The rail
line's construction began at either end and was to be connected with a
nearly 7,000-foot tunnel near the pass. When the southern piece of the
line was completedwith Southern Pacific rail service between
Los Angeles and San Fernando starting on January 21, 1874San
Fernando became the rail line's northern endpoint until the tunnel was
completed. Meanwhile, inspired by the prospect of train travel through
the area and land-hungry property owners, Northern California investors
bought land from the now-defunct San Fernando Mission and in 1874 began
subdividing the property next to the railroad's path into streets and
plots.
The 1876 completion of the line, thus linking both ends of California,
opened up San Fernando to a growing population and business base and
markets for its agriculture. Over the next two years, railroad
officials brought possible residents from Los Angeles to the new town
and soon the town had a bustling downtown and general store and was
shipping agricultural products via railroad.
Later daily trains on the Pacific Electric Railway came through as
well. By the 1920s, San Fernando was considered "the gateway to the
north" on the Southern Pacific's main line. More information about the
railroads can be found in the following sources:
Print
Sources:
- McGroarty,
John Steven, ed. History of Los Angeles County.
Volume I. Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, Inc.,
1923.
- Zierer,
Clifford M. "San FernandoA Type of Southern California Town,"
reprinted from Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, Volume XXIV, No. 1, March 1934.
- Mendheim,
Beverly. Ritchie Valens: The First Latino Rocker.
Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Press, 1987.
Images:
- Opening day of the Pacific
Electric train service to San Fernando, 1912
[Courtesy of San Fernando Valley Historical Society]
- First day of Pacific Electric
train service to San Fernando, 1912
[Courtesy of San Fernando Valley Historical Society]
Top of Page
7. What can you tell me
about the history of the San Fernando Mission?
The Mission San
Fernando Rey de España was founded on September 8, 1797, by
Father Fermin Lasuen, a Basque priest who was following in the
footsteps of the pioneering Franciscan missionary, Father
Junípero Serra. The San Fernando Mission was the seventeenth
in a succession of twenty-one missions established in the state. It
consisted of an extensive compound of buildings, including a large
church made of adobe brick and tile. The mission flourished from the
start, as a small group of Franciscan friars taught local Native
Americans a variety of skills that earned the mission a solid
reputation for its farming, cattle-ranching, carpentry, ironwork,
leatherwork, weaving, and vineyards and orchards that produced brandy
and wine.
The San Fernando
Mission became one of the most thriving and prosperous in the state of
California. By 1819 it had nearly 15,000 cattle, sheep, and horses, and
a multitude of buildings in its adobe compound, including a convent,
cemetery, 20-room residence building, chapel, kitchen, and workshop
buildings. During the period that lasted into the 1830s, thousands of
Native Americans were baptized, and many of them were also buried
behind the mission church in the cemetery. Church attendance was so
great that between the mission's founding and 1804, the first church on
the site was replaced by two more, each larger than the preceding one.
Keeping watch over the altar was the original statue of the canonized
King Ferdinand III of Spain, the mission's
namesake.
However,
following the Mexican revolt from Spain, between 1834 and 1836
California officials secularized the missions and confiscated property.
During these years, most of the Native Americans at the San Fernando
Mission were evicted. A mayordomo named Don Pedro Lopez was put in
charge of agriculture, but the mission quickly declined, its downhill
spiral compounded by a rapid decrease in the Native American
population. The mission's buildings
crumbled and became vermin-infested; its bells, books, furniture,
vestments, and stations of the cross were looted; and in 1845 its
buildings were almost entirely abandoned. The property passed into
private hands and was subdivided several times over, and for close to a
century a number of individuals and groups tried unsuccessfully to save
the mission from utter ruin. These would-be attempts included those by
Charles Lummis and the Landmarks Club in 1897, a "Candle Day" in 1916
intended to sell enough candles at a dollar each to pay for a new
church roof, and an exiled Mexican bishop's failed efforts to start a
boys' school.
In the 1930s,
however, Southwest Museum curator M.R. Harrington established the
Friends of the Mission, who began restoration with the help of other
organizations and groups that included the Native Daughters of the
Golden West and the Women's Auxiliary of the Los Angeles Chapter. The
refurbished site was rededicated in 1941, and after World War II the
William Randolph Hearst Foundation set up a Mission Restoration Fund. A
devastating earthquake in 1971 again damaged the mission's buildings,
including the church, but these structures were rebuilt or repaired as
needed. Today the missionlocated just two miles away from San
Fernandois a major tourist attraction. More information about
the San Fernando Mission can be found in the following sources:
Website
Links:
Print
Sources:
- Harrington,
Marie. Mission San Fernando: A Guide. Mission
Hills, California: San Fernando Valley Historical Society, Inc., 1981.
- McGroarty,
John Steven, ed. History of Los Angeles County.
Volume I. Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, Inc.,
1923.
- Engelhardt,
Zephyrin. San Fernando Rey, the Mission of the Valley.
Franciscan Herald Press, 1927.
- Weber,
Francis J. Mission San Fernando. Westernlore Press,
1968.
Images:
- San Fernando Rey de Espana
Mission and the statue of Junipero Serra, facing San Fernando Mission
Boulevard in Mission Hills, 2000. The Mission was founded in 1797.
[County of Los Angeles Public Library]
Top of Page
8.
What can you tell me about the early Native Americans who lived in the
area that is now San Fernando?
Before
white explorers from Europe came through the area, the region where San
Fernando is now was inhabited by Gabrielino and Tataviam Native
Americans, the latter calling the area Achois Comihabit. The
Gabrielinos arrived around 500 B.C. as part of the so-called Shoshonean
wedge. In the San Fernando Valley, the Gabrielinosone of the
wealthiest and most powerful groups in southern California before the
arrival of Europeansspoke a dialect called
Fernandeño. They occupied the general area that included the
Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana river watersheds, and those of
smaller streams in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains; the Los
Angeles basin; coastal lands between Aliso and Topango creeks; and San
Clemente, San Nicolas, and Santa Catalina islands. Living in villages
of between 50 and 100 people, Gabrielinos were known for being
spiritual, brave, and peaceful. Their culture
declined quickly with the establishment of the San Gabriel Mission in
the early 1770s, after Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá
entered their territory while crossing California in 1769.
When
Franciscan fathers arrived to establish the San Fernando Mission in the
1790s, local Native Americans were helping Francisco Reyes run his
ranch, called the Reyes Rancho, whose property he then gave over to the
mission. Soon the missionaries had cast a wide net across the valley,
baptizing Indians who were Cahuenga, Camulos, Piru, Simi, Topanga, and
Tujunga, from almost 200 rancherías (villages). At the
mission, hundreds of Indians lived there while priests taught them to
farm, raise and care for animals, cure hides, work in vineyards and
make wine, and trades including carpentry, masonry, tailoring,
shoemaking. More information about Native Americans and San Fernando
can be found in the following sources:
Website
Links:
Print
Sources:
- Robinson,
W.W. The Story of San Fernando Valley. Los Angeles:
Title Insurance and Trust Company, 1961.
- Sturtevant,
William C., ed. Handbook of North American Indians.
Volume 8. California, edited by Robert F. Heizer.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978.
Top of Page
9. Who were Geronimo
and Catalina Lopez and what is the connection between their Lopez Adobe
home and San Fernando's past?
In the early
1860s, Geronimo and Catalina Lopezthe daughter of majordomo
Pedro Lopezbought about forty acres of land north of where the
San Fernando
Mission had been. They built a big adobe home and stagehouse known as
Lopez Station. They made their mark in the area, with Don Geronimo
opening the first post office in the valley in 1869 and also starting
its first general store at Lopez Station. Their Lopez Adobe home was
built by Valentin Lopez, Geronimo's cousin and brother-in-law, in
1882-83 at what is now the corner of Maclay Avenue and Pico Street. The
Lopezes represented a bridge between the Mission's former glory days
and the 1874 founding of San Fernando as its own community, with gold
rush fever and an influx of settlers filling the intervening years. In
the process, they witnessed the area's evolution from ranching to
agriculture to orchards to development. Their Lopez Adobe home was the
first two-story adobe residential structure in the San Fernando Valley,
and to this day it is considered the city's oldest standing building.
The 1997 bicentennial of the mission coincided with the restoration of
their home, which was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. More
information about Geronimo and Catalina Lopez can be found in:
Print
Sources:
- "The
Lopez Adobe and our heritage," no author listed, Record Ledger,
December 3, 1997, p. 4.
Images:
- Geronimo Lopez Adobe in San
Fernando, facing the corner of Pico Street and Maclay Avenue, 2000. The
Lopez Adobe was built in 1882.
[County of Los Angeles Public Library]
Top of Page
10.
What is the relationship between the Owens Valley Aqueduct and the
development of the San Fernando Valley?
Water
from the Owens Valley, which was transported 250 miles to Los Angeles
via the aqueduct starting in 1913, allowed the San Fernando
Valleywhich had been a dry-farming region largely dependent on
rain for agricultureto flourish as an agricultural community.
The Owens River drained snowmelt from the Sierra Nevadas. In around
1900, residents of the Owens Valley hoped that with passage of the
National Reclamation Act they could channel the river into irrigation
projects for their own agricultural uses. Instead, Los Angeles
officials acquired the water rights to the Owens River by purchasing
the surrounding land. In 1907, Los Angeles residents approved $23
million in bonds to pay for construction of the aqueduct, known
variously as the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the Owens Valley Aqueduct.
Construction began the following year, and on November 5, 1913, the
gates of the aqueduct opened at "The Cascades" northwest of San
Fernando and brought the river water to the growing city of Los
Angeles.
Completion
of the aqueductat the time the country's largest municipal
water systemtransformed San Fernando and the San Fernando
Valley. It led, among other things, to long-range planning for
development and the formation in 1909 of The Los Angeles Suburban Homes
Company. Part of Lopez Station is today covered by a reservoir now
owned by the city of Los Angeles. Chatsworth, near San Fernando, was
formerly called "Owensmouth" because it was where the Aqueduct entered
Los Angeles County. More information about the relationship between the
aqueduct and San Fernando can be found in the following sources:
Website
Links:
Print
Sources:
- Los
Angeles (Calif.). Board of Public Service Commissioners. Complete
Report on Construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct: With Introductory
Historical Sketch. Dept. of Public Service, 1916.
- Kahrl,
William L. Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles'
Water Supply in the Owens Valley. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1982.
- Walton,
John. Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture, and
Rebellion in California. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992.
Top of Page
11.
What can you tell me about Ritchie Valens and his connection to San
Fernando?
Richard
Steve Valenzuela, aka "Ritchie Valens," was the so-called father of
Latin and Chicano rock music, who died February 3, 1958 at the age of
seventeen
in an airplane crash. He grew up in San Fernando and attended the
city's schools and became known for his hit song "La Bamba" while
establishing himself
as one of the biggest pop music phenomenons of his time. The
Mexican-American Valens used pioneering music techniques of combining
rock and jazz and using a medley of melodies within his songs, and made
his brief but memorable mark on music with three albums in less than
eight months. When he was born in 1941, his parents lived at 1337
Coronel Street in San Fernando; they separated when he was three years
old and Ritchie often stayed with his father, who now lived in Pacoima.
His father died in 1951 when Ritchie was 10, and the boy went on to
live with various extended relatives, several of whom exposed him to
music. More information about Ritchie Valens and his connection with
San Fernando can be found in the following sources:
Print
Sources:
Top of Page
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San Fernando
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