Towns--and Their Names--Just Aren't What They Used to Be : Identity: The area's residents have a long history of trying to spruce up community images by changing appellations. It hasn't always worked.

By JOHN JOHNSON

May 20, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

This is a story about what might have been.

Let’s say you fire up your sports coupe and head down to El Camino Real in Girard. Blowing off a couple of red lights because red doesn’t go with your outfit, you breeze through Runnymede and roar up to the curb in Laurelwood half an hour late for lunch with your agent.

After learning that they want you for that new series, you feel like celebrating, so you hit the mall in Zelzah and order a big emerald from your jeweler in Owensmouth before driving over to Roscoe to tell your mom the good news.

If you can trace that route on a map of the San Fernando Valley, you win an honorary membership in the local historical society.

As strange as those names sound today, all were attached at one time to communities in the Valley. That they no longer exist is a testament to the changing needs and fashions that motivated businessmen and civic leaders to alter the sound and feel of the Valley over the years.

Viewed through the long lens of history, the desire of some Sepulveda residents to create a new identity by renaming their neighborhood North Hills--despite the fact that there are more speed bumps in a gas station than hills in North Hills--is no stranger than dropping the euphonious Runnymede for Tarzana to honor a fictional illiterate in a loincloth.

North Hills officially came into being last week, but Elva Meline, curator of the San Fernando Valley Historical Society, says changing the names of communities has a long tradition in the Valley. Among the recent changes, West Hills seceded from Canoga Park and Lake View Terrace broke off from Pacoima.

“It’s the sort of thing people do after awhile,” she said. “A different group of people come in and they don’t have the historical background” to know the value and roots of their community’s name.

It seems unlikely that Sepulveda, the namesake of an early Los Angeles mayor, will be the last name to be scorned by residents trying to spruce up their community’s image.

Still, a review of the archives under Meline’s care shows that leaving behind a distasteful name does not guarantee that the problems associated with the old name will go away. If the people of Sodom and Gomorrah had changed the names of their towns, would there be a salt shortage today?

“It doesn’t always work,” Meline agreed.

To understand the passion for name-changing in the Valley, one should begin with Gaspar de Portola, the Spanish explorer who crossed Sepulveda Pass in 1769. Looking onto a plain dotted with majestic trees, the expedition’s Father Juan Crespi dubbed it the Valle de los Encinos , the Valley of the Oaks.

The Indians who were already there probably had other names for the area. But nobody asked them for their opinion.

In time, the explorers gave way to ranchers and farmers, who shipped tons of produce out of the Valley. In turn, the farmers and ranchers who used to drive herds up dusty El Camino Real, now Ventura Boulevard, were replaced by the developers and home builders. They carved up the ranches into horsy suburbs and finally into crowded neighborhoods, each with its own mini-mall.

And throughout this transformation, the names changed again and again. Zelzah, the biblical word for oasis, became Northridge. And Lankershim, which once billed itself as the “Home of the Peach,” became North Hollywood, in part, Meline theorized, to convince its residents that they weren’t really out in the boondocks.

Curiously, as humans altered the landscape, they often changed the names attached to the land in unexpected ways, preferring citified names when the Valley was rural, later adopting bucolic names when the Valley urbanized.

Vincent Girard was a hustling real estate salesman who met travelers at the train depot and escorted them to his property. Girard would accept pocket watches as down payments if the buyer had no money.

Girard did a lot to make himself unwelcome in the community that bore his name. He would proudly show prospective land buyers the big new buildings on Ventura Boulevard as proof that the area was booming. Only later did his customers find out that those magnificent structures were nothing but facades.

Residents hoping to disassociate themselves from this flimflam man changed the name Girard to the earthy Woodland Hills in 1941, even though the area was on its way to urban sprawl.

Canoga Park went through a similar transformation. The community was first known as Owensmouth, in recognition of the arrival of Owens River water to Los Angeles, which would allow the Valley to grow rapidly.

As the area urbanized, the local women’s club took a dislike to the name and groped for something more melodious. The word canoga , according to one theory, is derived from the Indian word canoa , meaning a watering hole. It was a fitting name for the area when it was undeveloped because it featured the only watering hole for miles around.

The name was changed in 1931. The only problem was that the next year, 1,000 visitors were scheduled to make a trek out to Canoga Park for a celebration of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. But all the local signs and maps still read Owensmouth. With the prospect looming before them of hundreds of distinguished visitors wandering around the hot Valley, lost and thirsty, the signs were changed to Canoga Park in the nick of time.

Some names changed to reflect the community’s growing status.

Studio City began life as Laurelwood. But in the 1920s, the nation became enamored of Hollywood, and the Valley was no different. Bathing beauties and Keystone Kops crowded the sidewalks at Ventura Boulevard and Radford Avenue, where Mack Sennett’s silent film studio was located. So much money flowed from the studio into the local economy that a common joke held that the community ought to use dollar signs for light standards.

Laurelwood was just not impressive enough anymore for a town that gave a start to Bette Davis and was now known as “the community with a mile of style.” Studio City was born in 1928.

Probably the best-known story of name-swapping concerned the little community of Runnymede. Author Edgar Rice Burroughs acquired a 500-acre ranch in the area and christened it Tarzana Ranch, in honor of the vine-swinger who became so popular around the world that at one time he was second only to Sherlock Holmes as the best-known fictional character in English literature.

Unsatisfied with the name Runnymede, of which there were several, Meline said, residents decided that they wanted something different in the 1920s. Meeting outside the community’s boundaries because there was no meeting hall in town, the residents decided that a guy who could rule the jungle ought to be given a shot at streets and sewers.

Sometimes governmental caprice is responsible for a name change. That was the case in Marian, which took its name from a business leader’s wife. The Post Office Department feared that the mail for Marian might be diverted by mistake to another town in California named Mariana. So in 1922, the residents decided to change the name to the Spanish word for the mignonette flower, Reseda.

A mellifluous name does not guarantee respect, however. Despite the fact that it once boasted “more free parking than any other West Valley area,” Reseda was ridiculed in 1985 by a radio station talk show as the “Cleveland of the Valley.” That hurt the residents.

Rather than change the name again, however, Resedans fought back in the name of civic pride and held a songfest to select a town song. The winner was “Reseda, My Friend, My Home.”

Much like the disaffected residents of Sepulveda--or North Hills--the people of Roscoe thought that they could change their image by changing their name.

“I guess we figured that all Roscoe meant was ‘that place where they have all the gravel pits and chickens,’ ” one resident told a newspaper just before the name was changed in 1949. “We felt they might change their minds if we had a good-sounding name.”

So they came up with Sun Valley. Did it work?

As one Sun Valley resident put it at the time: “I didn’t notice the roads being any better or the streets any cleaner the day they changed the name.”

Names Not the Same THEN: NOW Girard: Woodland Hills

Runnymede: Tarzana

Laurelwood: Studio City

Zelzah: Northridge

Owensmouth: Canoga Park

Roscoe: Sun Valley

Lankershim: North Hollywood

Marian: Reseda

SEPARATIST COMMUNITIES

Sepulveda: North Hills