Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.
Just as his Farmers Market was a-sprouting at 3d and Fairfax, Hollywood Regency architect James E. Dolena was hired by E. Manchester Boddy to build his “Rancho Descanso,” in a choice woodsy bowl on what had once been the Rancho Verdugo. With truly amazing native plant areas designed by none other than Theodore Payne himself, the myriad gardens, formal and natural, are truly a wonder to visit.
View from Pacoima Hills, from almost the exact spot where I made the panorama video.
In 1887, Jouette Allen bought from Charles Maclay. the land just south of Maclay’s new city of San Fernando, to make his own city. It had these lovely hills, the Southern Pacific railroad ran right through it, and there was plenty of good bottom land along the murmuring Tujunga Creeks and the Pacoima Wash.
The Great Flood of 1891 obliterated everything, including, by repute, the most elaborate Victorian train station the Southern Pacific had ever built.
In 1912, land values skyrocketed when the brand new Los Angeles Aqueduct suddenly disgorged at Pacoima’s very doorstep. So the new owner, one A.B. Widney, quickly built a dam at Pacoima Creek to protect the land, and re-launched as the “Townsite of Mullholland,” with the usual LA wheel-estate frenzy.
“Mulholland” lasted only two years: William Mulholland, builder of the aqueduct, got angry that his name was appropriated, forcing Widney back to “Pacoima”. Anyway, few homesteaders took the risky land, so Pacoima remained the Sticks. Orchards and olive groves flourished. Picking, packing, canning, and rail-yard jobs were a lure for Mexicans, for Japanese, and for blacks and Okies.
But Pacoima’s railroad was a double-edged sword: it was the town’s economic magnet and raison d’etre, but by the 1930’s, “North Hollywood” and “Studio City” in the southern Valley were booming with platinum blondes and motion picture executives. Developers there quickly enacted racial codes and covenants. This left Pacoima high (but scarcely dry) as the black-and-brown hick-town on the wrong side of the tracks. Then it all was destroyed again in the 1930’s floods. Hansen Dam was built in 1940, totally reconfiguring the landscape. And after the shock of Pearl Harbor a year later, the Japanese Americans were rounded up and put in internment camps; at least 20% of the population was thus ripped from the community. But Lockheed opened a plant, more blacks were lured to the area with war jobs. It was almost the only place in the Valley that welcomed them.
The sailboat is floating above the rows of newly-planted orchard in the previous photo. The lake didn’t last long.Oy veh….the jumbled, incoherent sprawl, already well underway in 1957.Probably the last picture ever taken of the undeveloped Pacoima Hills. (That’s a gun club and shooting range.) The next year it became “Hansen Hills” and got covered with homely tract homes.
Pacoima has had a difficult history because of race and agricultural prejudice, but its community has much to be proud of. The Japanese returned and now maintain a thriving community center. And Pacoima’s famous “favorite sons” are tragic Latino rock ‘n’ roll idol Richie Valens, and the esteemed black social justice and fair housing leader Rev. Hillery Broadus. Broadus founded the NAACP of the San Fernando Valley, and from his pulpit at Calvary Baptist, roused Los Angeles during the Civil Rights struggles.
The Valley Village View 