Indigenous era
Wixánga — Tongva/Fernandeño village
The Tongva village in this vicinity is known as Wixánga, from wixár — "thorn" or "prickle" in the Fernandeño dialect — a reference to the prickly pear cactus. The village's placement at the intersection of grassland, chaparral, and oak woodland allowed access to acorns, prickly pear, chia, yucca, and small game within walking distance.
Read the First Peoples page →Spanish / Mexican era
Mission San Fernando Rey de España founded
The mission brings the canyon under Spanish ecclesiastical control. Tongva residents are forcibly relocated to labor in mission agriculture and ranching. The Spanish translate the village's name as Cañada de las Tunas — canyon of the prickly pears.
Secularization of the California missions
The Mexican government dissolves mission holdings, redistributing the land into large private ranchos. Most of the northeastern San Fernando Valley passes through a succession of Mexican-era grants, including Rancho Tujunga.
Anglo-American settlement
The Maclay purchase
California State Senator Charles Maclay acquires 56,000 acres of the northern and eastern San Fernando Valley — the single event that opens the eastern Valley to Anglo-American subdivision.
Read the Early Settlement page →Southern Pacific Railroad completed
The Southern Pacific drives its line through the eastern San Fernando Valley, connecting Southern and Northern California. A rail stop — later named Roberts, then Roscoe — is established near what is now Sun Valley.
First subdivisions
The broader Sunland-Tujunga planning area first sees Anglo residential development. Sunland is subdivided from the old Rancho Tujunga tract in 1884.
Hansen horse ranch established
Homer and Marie Hansen establish a horse ranch in the flats near the confluence of Big Tujunga and Little Tujunga Washes. Their ranch would later be purchased by the Army Corps to build Hansen Dam.
City of Los Angeles era
The Los Angeles Aqueduct opens
The City of Los Angeles' Owens Valley water arrives in the San Fernando Valley, precipitating a wave of annexations as unincorporated communities accept LA jurisdiction in exchange for aqueduct water. Roberts is renamed Roscoe in the same year, after a Southern Pacific Railroad employee.
Annexation to the City of Los Angeles
Roscoe and the surrounding foothill communities, including what is now La Tuna Canyon, are brought into the City of Los Angeles in stages. The community retains rural-style "K" zoning permitting horse-keeping.
Stonehurst built
The Pep Rempp Organization markets the Stonehurst tract in northeastern Sun Valley. Stonemason Dan Montelongo builds some 92 bungalows from native river-rock gathered from the Tujunga Wash between 1923 and 1925, plus the Stonehurst Park Community Building in 1930.
Read the Stonehurst page →La Tuna CCC Camp opens
A Civilian Conservation Corps camp opens at 6330 Tujunga Canyon Boulevard as part of the New Deal work relief program, doing fire-road and flood-control work in the Verdugo and Tujunga foothills.
The flood and the dam
The Los Angeles Flood of 1938
Two Pacific storms drop more than 32 inches of rain on the San Gabriel Mountains. The Tujunga Wash levees fail. At least 115 people die (later estimates: 144); $78 million in property is destroyed. Federal flood-control intervention begins.
Read the Hansen Dam page →Hansen Dam built
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers builds Hansen Dam on Tujunga Wash, 97 feet high and two miles long — at the time, the largest earthen flood-control dam of its type in the world. The Hansen horse ranch is bought out to make room.
The war years
CCC camp seized as detention station
The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Department of Justice seizes the La Tuna CCC Camp for use as an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention facility.
Tuna Canyon Detention Station opens
The first detainees arrive. Over the next 22 months, more than 2,000 Japanese, German, Italian, and Japanese-Peruvian civilians are held without due process before being transferred to Fort Missoula, Fort Lincoln, and Santa Fe.
Read the Detention Station page →Detention station closes
The camp closes as permanent Department of Justice facilities become operational. The site is converted into a Los Angeles County probation school for boys.
Postwar era
Roscoe renamed Sun Valley
Residents and local businesses successfully campaign to change the neighborhood name from Roscoe to Sun Valley.
Holiday Lake opens
Los Angeles County opens Holiday Lake in the Hansen Dam basin as a permanent recreational water body for swimming, boating, and fishing. It will silt up and be abandoned in 1991.
Verdugo Hills Golf Course opens
A partnership of Los Angeles-area doctors opens the Verdugo Hills Golf Course on the former detention station site, after purchasing the property from the County for $7.6 million. The detention camp buildings are demolished.
Theodore Payne dies
The pioneering California native-plant horticulturist dies on May 6 at the age of 91, three years after the foundation bearing his name is incorporated.
Theodore Payne Foundation moves to Sun Valley
Nurseryman Eddie Merrill donates 20 acres in Sun Valley to the Foundation. The property at 10459 Tuxford Street becomes the oldest native-plant nursery in Los Angeles County.
Read the Theodore Payne page →La Tuna Canyon Trail built
One of the first foot trails established in the 1,100-acre La Tuna Canyon Park in the Verdugo Mountains.
Official identity
Petition and recognition
Residents organize a petition drive in 1994. In August 1995, the Los Angeles City Council formally recognizes La Tuna Canyon as a community distinct from Sun Valley.
Read the Recognition page →The 21st century
Tujunga Avenue sinkhole
A flash flood opens a 30-foot-deep sinkhole on the 8000 block of Tujunga Avenue, killing a Los Angeles City civil engineer. A sobering reminder that even protected watersheds can still fail locally.
Detention Station designated HCM No. 1039
The City of Los Angeles designates the Tuna Canyon Detention Station site at 6433 W. La Tuna Canyon Road as Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1039, after a campaign led by the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition.
The La Tuna Fire
A wildfire ignites in the 10800 block of La Tuna Canyon Road and burns 7,194 acres over nine days across the Verdugo Mountains — the largest wildfire in the City of Los Angeles in 50 years. Five homes destroyed, ten injuries, more than 730 homes evacuated.
Read the La Tuna Fire page →Post-fire mudflows
Heavy rain on fire-denuded hillsides sends a 36-inch debris flow down La Tuna Canyon Road. Forty to forty-five homes damaged across Sun Valley and Burbank.
Read the Mudflows page →Detention Station historical marker installed
More than 75 years after the station closed, a formal historical marker is unveiled at the site, with representatives of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition and descendants of detainees in attendance.
Housing zone change denied
The Los Angeles City Council denies a zone change that would have allowed 215 housing units on the former Verdugo Hills Golf Course / Tuna Canyon Detention Station site. The property owner, Snowball West Investments, appeals.
A canyon in the city
La Tuna Canyon remains a rural canyon community of roughly four miles' length within the second-largest city in the United States — with horse properties, decomposed-granite driveways, Verdugo trailheads, the 1,100-acre La Tuna Canyon Park, the Theodore Payne Foundation nursery, the Tuna Canyon Detention Station memorial, and the oaks.