Sunland-Tujunga
Neighborhood of Los Angeles
Historic Bolton Hall in Tujunga, 2008
Sunland-Tujunga Location within Los Angeles
Coordinates: 34°15′8″N 118°17′15″W / 34.25222°N 118.28750°W / 34.25222; -118.28750
Country	United States
State	California
County	Los Angeles
City	Los Angeles
Population  (2008)	59,087

Sunland-Tujunga /təˈhʌŋɡə/ is a Los Angeles city neighborhood within the Crescenta Valley and Verdugo Mountains.^[1] Sunland and Tujunga began as separate settlements and today are linked through a single police station, branch library, neighborhood council, chamber of commerce, city council district, and high school.^[2] The merging of these communities under a hyphenated name goes back as far as 1928.^[3] Sunland-Tujunga contains the highest point of the city, Mount Lukens.

Geography

Setting

The neighborhood lies between the Verdugo Mountains and the San Gabriel Mountains. It is contiguous on the east with La Crescenta-Montrose. Sunland and Tujunga are divided by Mount Gleason Avenue, with Sunland on the west and Tujunga on the east. Mount Lukens, located within Tujunga, is the highest point in Los Angeles, at 5,074 ft (1,547 m).^[4][5]

Thoroughfares

By 1927, half of the streets had been paved, and a state highway ran through the town.^[6]

Streets within the Sunland and Tuna Canyon annex to Los Angeles were renamed in June 1929. The main east-west road, previously known as Michigan Avenue, became Foothill Boulevard. Other streets were renamed as follows: Los Angeles Street to Apperson Avenue, Sherman Street to Hartranft Avenue, Center Street to Grenoble Avenue, North Street to Wentworth Avenue, Third Street to Woodward Avenue, and Hill Street to Hillrose Avenue. Sunset renamed to Commerce St. Manzanita Drive was renamed McGroarty Avenue in honor of John Steven McGroarty, who lived nearby.^[7]

In the 1960s, the Sunland-Tujunga Chamber of Commerce took an active stand in opposition to routing the proposed Foothill Freeway through Shadow Hills, Los Angeles, claiming the neighborhood's "rural atmosphere" would be destroyed and would wipe out 28 more homes than an alternate route.^[8]

After years of discussion and delay, the final stretch of the 48.6-mile (78.2 km) freeway through Sunland-Tujunga was scheduled for dedication on April 3, 1981, with State Transportation Director Adriana Gianturco presiding.^[9] Exits in Sunland and Tujunga are, from west to east, at Sunland Boulevard, La Tuna Canyon Road, and Lowell Avenue (shared with La Crescenta). The freeway's right-of-way almost completely bypasses the main part of the community, and runs along a viaduct in the Verdugo Mountains.

Today, the neighborhood has one major thoroughfare: Foothill Boulevard; nearly all businesses in Sunland-Tujunga are located on or near it. Tujunga Canyon Boulevard is a heavily traveled north-south route, but is primarily residential. Sunland Boulevard and Wentworth Street are popular surface streets that connect the community to Sun Valley and the rest of the city of Los Angeles. Sunland-Tujunga is also served by the Interstate 210 freeway. Big Tujunga Canyon Road connects Sunland-Tujunga to the Angeles Forest Highway, while La Tuna Canyon Road provides an alternate route into Sun Valley through the rugged portion of the Verdugo Mountains.

Climate

Sunland-Tujunga has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa under the Köppen climate classification).

History

Pre-colonial and Mexican eras

Sunland and Tujunga were originally home to the Tongva people. In 1840, the area was part of the Rancho Tujunga Mexican land grant, but later developers marked off a plot of land known as the Tejunga Park, or the Tujunga Park Tract.^[11][12] The name "Tujunga" (or Tuxunga) is assumed to have meant "old woman's place" in the Fernandeño language, a dialect of the extinct Tongva language, where tuxu, "old woman", is a term for Mother Earth in Tongva mythology.^[13] The term is thought to relate to an ethnohistoric narrative, known as Khra'wiyawi, collected by Carobeth Laird from Juan and Juana Menendez at the Leonis Adobe in 1916. In the narrative, the wife of Khra'wiyawi (the chief of the region) is stricken with grief over the untimely loss of her daughter. In her sadness, she retreats to the mountains and turns to stone. It is this event that is thought to be the basis for the village name. ^[14] In fact, a large rock in Little Tujunga Canyon looks like an old woman in a sitting position.^[15]

Early Sunland: 1885–1925

Sunland began as Monte Vista in 1885, when 2,200 acres (8.9 km²) of the Tejunga [sic] Park tract were divided into lots ranging from five to 40 acres (160,000 m²).^[11] One of the first uses of the new tract was the planting of 40 acres (160,000 m²) of olives, which made it the largest olive orchard in Los Angeles County.^[16] In 1887, the Monte Vista Hotel was being served by the Sunland Post Office.^[17] By 1906, the appellation "Sunland" was being used by the Los Angeles Times rather than "Monte Vista".^[18] A 1907 story noted that Sunland was the "first supply store, and a good one, about seven miles from the railroad" at San Fernando, at the mouth of the Little Tejunga and Big Tejunga canyons (the old spelling).^[19]

In 1908, Sunland was referred to as difficult to access, at a height of 1,500 feet (460 m) "over rough mountain roads". An automobile trip from Los Angeles took "a long day" to complete.^[20] In 1910, a Los Angeles Times correspondent wrote about Sunland:

The place is aptly named.. . . one gets no inkling of the beauties till he is right in the town. Great live oaks, scattered with Nature's reckless disregard for expense, give the place a stately quiet.. . . In the center of town the oaks are so thick that the sun is baffled, and this section has been made a public park, which is the Fourth of July and general hot-weather rendezvous of the country round, from Glendale to San Fernando.^[21]

By 1923, Sunland had a population of about 2,000 and an active chamber of commerce. The sloping hills of what was called the Monte Vista Valley were the site of vineyards for table grapes, and the town's sole industry, a cannery, specialized in packing olives from local trees. Monte Vista Park in the center of town attracted picnickers, with a county home for children, sponsored by women's clubs and other organizations.^[22] This charity was a descendant of the Monte Vista Lodge, a home for "undernourished children" organized by social worker Belle N. Hall and opened in 1921 by the Council of Community Service. It had 45 rooms in a former hotel on 2.5 acres (10,000 m²) of land.^[18][23][24] just a block from Sunland Park.^[25]

After Tujunga was organized as a city in 1925, a move sprang up in Sunland to be annexed to the new municipality, but the idea was rejected "by a heavy vote" in October of that year, and activists in the then-Monte Vista School District turned their attention to a proposed $21,000 bond issue for a new school building.^[26]

Early Tujunga: 1907–1929

In 1907, social philosopher and community organizer William Ellsworth Smythe joined forces with real estate speculator Marshall V. Hartranft to found what Smythe believed would be a kind of utopia.^[27] The movement had been successful in establishing colonies in San Ysidro, California, and in Idaho. The utopianists had as their slogan, "A Little Land and a Lot of Living," and the founders divided their community into 1.5-acre (6,100 m²) lots, which they called "little lands". A community center built from local river rock, Bolton Hall, was dedicated in August 1913 and still stands as a historical monument and museum operated by the Little Landers Historical Society.^{[28]: 32–39}

An early advertising slogan was "Move to Tujunga with a trowel and a bag of cement, and build your own." After the end of World War I, hundreds of "rent-oppressed" people from Los Angeles did exactly that, and they built their houses with foundations fashioned from the "great masses of stones and boulders" that lay throughout the town. For the most part, the "Indian pueblo idea" was followed, or a "rustic hills" style, and homes without boulder foundations were rare. By 1927, Tujunga had about 4,000 residents, having surpassed Sunland in population. Many of the settlers maintained small farms with gardens, poultry, rabbits, bees, and various other livestock.^[6]

Tujunga was home to John Steven McGroarty, playwright, U.S. congressman, and California Poet Laureate. He lived in a home he built himself and completed in 1923, known as Rancho Chupa Rosa. The building is an Historic Cultural Monument (#63) of the City of Los Angeles and is now known as the McGroarty Arts Center.

On Tujunga's main street in the 1920s was a place called "Dean's store, the locale of the 'Millionaire's Club of Happiness and Contentment', a little group of the town's pioneers that is featured in the writings of John Steven McGroarty".^[6] Tujungans led by McGroarty first wanted to become a city of the sixth class to be called "Verdugo Hills" in 1924, and a petition to that effect was submitted to the board of supervisors, which postponed the idea indefinitely because of concerns about the proposed boundaries.^[29][30]

Tujunga was nevertheless incorporated after an election on April 21, 1925, with the southern border following the Rancho Tujunga boundary.^[31] A. Adams was elected treasurer, and Mrs. Bertha A. Morgan was chosen as city clerk.^[32] Bolton Hall served as the city hall until Tujunga was consolidated with Los Angeles in 1932.^{[28]: 35 [33][34][35]}

One of the first orders of business for the new city of Tujunga in 1925 was an attempt to enlarge the municipality by taking in the foothills south and southwest of the new city, bounded on the east by the "La Crescenta Rancho line,^[36] south to Big Tuna Canyon" and west to the then-Los Angeles boundary and Wicks Road.^[37] The attempt failed because Los Angeles annexed the area first.^[37]

Tujunga's 1,500-foot (460 m) elevation and geographic isolation from the San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles Basin freed it from some of the air pollution that was a problem in many other parts of Greater Los Angeles. Because of this, it attracted many asthmatics early on. In 1929, the Tujunga City Council set policy to establish zones where "sanitariums and other institutions for the care of tubercular patients" could be established.^[38]

Joining Los Angeles: 1926–1932

Most of today's Sunland was annexed to the city of Los Angeles, effective August 4, 1926.^[34] La Tuna Canyon was annexed in 1927.^[39] On June 23, 1927,^[40] the city of Los Angeles held an election for much of the same territory as claimed by Tujunga, above, and the annexation passed, "based largely on a big block of votes within an old-folks' home at Sunland, which can participate in the Community Chest funds when and if they are within the city limits of the greater city". The result was a legal dispute that had to be settled in the courts.^[37]

The famous grove of oak trees, owned by the county, and widely known as the Monte Vista Park of Sunland, is involved in the dispute. The municipality of Tujunga has already agreed to release its authority over the park to the county authorities, so that administration. . . will continue for ten years without change, except as to police protection in event of disorders.^[37]

The first election for Tujunga to be consolidated with Los Angeles was held on February 15, 1927. In heavy rain, voters turned down the idea by a vote of 594 to 354.^[41] A second election held in March 1930 also resulted in defeat for annexation, "by a large majority".^[42] John Steven McGroarty was on a committee opposing annexation called "All for Tujunga".^[43] The third and final election in January 1932 resulted in a vote to join Los Angeles, although the actual transfer was delayed by inaction of state authorities. Tujunga abandoned its independence and joined the city on March 8, 1932.^[34][44]

Tuna Canyon Detention Station: 1941–1943

Tuna Canyon Detention Station was a temporary holding facility used for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in the Tujunga community of Los Angeles, California. Some Italian Americans, German Americans, and Japanese Peruvians were also interned there. From this detention station, prisoners were later transferred to permanent internment camps.^[45]

Gravel pit: 1950s–1960s

In 1959, a trial court held that the city had no authority to refuse a zoning variance to Consolidated Rock Company to continue operating a gravel pit in the Big Tujunga Wash. An appellate court overturned that decision, but in 1962, the California Supreme Court upheld the right of the city to ban the pit. The decision was a victory for local people who had battled the project for more than three years: They contended that the dust from the existing pit affected the area's reputation as a "haven for asthma sufferers". Attorney Peter R. Rice argued as a friend of the court that climate was more important than commercial mining operations.^[46]

City Council redistricting: 1986–2002

Los Angeles City Councilman Howard Finn of Sunland died in office on August 12, 1986,^[47] and his Northeast San Fernando Valley First District was left without an incumbent.^[48]

At the same time, the City Council was under a court order to redistrict itself to provide more representation for Latinos. After a bitter contest in which Finn's semirural constituents fought against being combined with more built-up areas and amid traces of ethnic animosity,^[49] the result was to move the vacant First District seat into a redrawn, 69% Latino area north and west of downtown Los Angeles^[50] and to place Sunland-Tujunga into a reshaped Second Council District, already represented by Joel Wachs. It was a Y-shaped configuration "with only a long, thin finger of territory" connecting Sunland-Tujunga on the north with Van Nuys on the south.^[51] A lawsuit against the plan was dismissed in late September by U.S. District Judge James M. Ideman.^[52]

Despite the fact that Wachs had struggled to prevent being assigned to a district that was 90% new to him,^[50] the councilman was warmly greeted when he arrived to meet his new constituents in a reception at the Sunland-Tujunga Municipal Building. He found an area with a down-home, rural flavor and about 30% of the voters in his new district.^[53] He told a reporter:

There hasn't been one nasty person, one hostile ... They want to be friends.... In the second-largest city in the U.S., that you can have an area like this to live in is just fantastic. Wherever I've gone, preserving the lifestyle seems to be the No. 1 issue.^[53]

Wachs served on the council for 15 more years. He resigned effective 2001, and a city redistricting commission took the opportunity to propose a shakeup in boundaries, splitting the Second District in two.^[54] Before that could be considered, though, Wendy Greuel was elected to the city council. In March 2002, she reopened the Sunland-Tujunga field office (closed by Wachs),^[55] and the redistricting plan was never heard of again. Greuel served until July 2009. She was succeeded by Paul Krekorian.

Home Depot controversy: 2005–2009

In January 2009, hardware company Home Depot announced it was abandoning a five-year effort to turn a former Kmart store at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Woodward Avenue, Tujunga, into a big-box store of its own.^[56]

The Los Angeles Times reported:

Opponents also mobilized hundreds of people to turn out for meetings on the project, including a marathon seven-hour session that turned into a shouting match over day laborers and immigration. Home Depot, in turn, had retained a team of expensive lobbyists who arranged for buses to transport supporters to meetings at city hall. In 2006, one of those lobbyists sent a memo promising to feed and transport 150 people in orange T-shirts to a city council hearing, where they would appear in favor of Home Depot—at a cost of $24,000 to the company.^[57]

The city council determined that the extent of construction involved exceeded the limits of what is known as "tenant improvements" and thus qualified as a "project" subject to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Under CEQA rules, Home Depot would be required to carry out an environmental impact report, so the company filed a lawsuit against Council Member Wendy Greuel, accusing her of improperly interfering with the process. The company paid $2 million to lobbying firms on behalf of the project.^[56]

Homelessness: 2010 and after

Beginning in 2010, news accounts began to highlight a homeless problem in the Big Tujunga Wash. As Channel 7 Eyewitness News put it:

For years, the Big Tujunga Wash has provided a picturesque backdrop for local residents who enjoy the rare natural river bed that's perfect for hiking, jogging, or collecting butterflies. Also, the new Angeles National Golf Club is right in the middle of the wash. But, residents say there's trouble brewing in Big Tujunga. Homeless camps are big concerns for residents, who say they sympathize with the homeless, but say they drag in too much trash.^[58]

Major cleanups were undertaken in the homeless encampments in the wash in 2015 and later, with tons of trash removed by volunteers and by city workers.^[59] One of them was reported as follows:

The cleanup — and summary eviction of as many as a hundred squatters — on 300 acres of private land a little more than a mile upstream from Hansen Dam was organized and financed by property owners of the Riverwood community of Sunland, a hillside enclave of about 35 homes whose residents come and go on a single road crossing the wash. Over the last three years, the growth of the shanty village has despoiled a public resource and subjected homes along Oro Vista Avenue to burglaries and the threat of violence, said Brian Schneider, who spoke for the residents.^[60]

Population

In 2009, the Los Angeles Times's "Mapping L.A." project supplied these neighborhood statistics based on the 2000 census, showing that Sunland, including Shadow Hills, had a census-measured population of 28,414 in 2000. Tujunga was slightly smaller, at 26,527. In both Sunland and Tujunga, the percentage of White people was high for the county. The percentages of divorced males, married females, and divorced females were among the county's highest.

Sunland

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