On Aug.5,1769 Spanish Capt.Gaspar de Portola and his expedition became the first Europeans to enter the San Fernando Valley. They camp at a Tongva settlement beneath the oaks of what is today Encino, California.
On March25,1869 french sheep breeder Eugene Garnier buys Rancho Los Encinos.
On july2,1869 Pio Pico sells his share of Valley land to Isaac lankershim,who led Levi Strauss and other German Jewish investors to buy the south Valley for $2.00 an acre.On
sep t.20,1889 Miguel Leonis,the tyrant of calabasas dies during a drunken spill from a wagon in Cahuenga Pass,setting off a bitter land dispute involving a common-law wife that would ultimately be settled in the state Supreme Court.
On Sept.24,1909 A syndicate run by Harry Chandler son-in-law of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, (publisher of the L.A. times) buys the Lankershim land from Isaac Van Nuys, with ambitious plans for new towns.
On March15,1919 Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs moves to a 550-acre estate west of Encino and names it Tarzana Ranch.
On March29,1929 The RKO studio ranch opens on 110 acres of farmland in Encino.
On May12,1929 Pickwick Airways begins service between San Francisco and Grand Central Airport Glendale.
On July1,1929 Community of Zelzah changes its name to North Los Angeles. It later becomes Northridge where i live.
On July29,1929 Groundbreaking at United Airport, Forerunner to Burbank Airport.
On July12,1949 A Standard Airlines C-46 crashes near Chatsworth, killing 35. Fourteen survive, including Judy garland's" Wizard of Oz " stand-in. In 1959 a Valley section of the Golden State Freeway opens at Alameda Avenue in Burbank. Also a partial reactor meltdown at the santa Susana Field Lab near Chatsworth releases radiation into the air.The incident remains secret for three decades.
On July22,1959 Grand Central Airport in Glendale closes.
On Sept.16,1959 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visits Los Angeles. He gives a tour of a new subdivision in Granada Hills but never leaves his car.
On Dec.2,1959 Jack" The Enforcer" Whalen, a well-known bookie,is fatally shot at Rondelli's on Ventura Boulevard. Gangster Mickey Cohen was later acquitted of murder. In 1969 valley college instructor Deena is fired after reading her sexually explicit poem,:Jehovah's Child," to her students. She's reinstated by the Supreme Court.
On June20,1969 Newport '69, a three-day rock festival, opens at Devonshire Downs in Northridge.
On Aug.9,1969 Charles Manson and his "family," living at Spahn Ranch near Chatsworth murder pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others. The next night, Manson leads an outing that ends in the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianco. In 1989 Burbanks Lawrence Engineering & Supply pleads guilty to selling substandard parts for the space shuttle, nuclear missiles and United Airlines planes; agrees to pay $625,000 in fines and restitution. In 1999 Sherman Oaks Galleria, the inspiration for the Valley Girl phenomenon closes as a full-service shopping mall.
On April15,1999 A UCLA health study finds higher-then-normal incidences of lung and other cancers among people living around the Rocketdynne's Santa Susana Field Lab.
On Aug.10,1999 Buford O. Furroe Jr. shoots and wounds three children, a teenager and a 68-year-old receptionist at the Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills.He then guns down Filipino American mailmam Joseph Lleto on a Chatsworth street. And thats a small look back in time on the 9's in Southern California in the great Unitied States.
