Naming a Town Just Isn’t What It Used to Be

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 recently, 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.