Back to School : A trip to Valley College can be a learning experience, during which visitors can enjoy music, art and history. Swimming and tennis facilities are also available.

Valley College opened in 1949 in temporary quarters on the Van Nuys High School campus, one of six junior colleges then in the Los Angeles Junior College District. A teaching staff of 21 had been gathered for an anticipated enrollment of 200 students, but more than double that number of students actually enrolled that first semester.

The college moved to its present location at 5800 Fulton Ave. in the summer of 1951. The 145 acres had previously been home to a dairy and a truck farm.

An old house served as the faculty center. Bungalows were built to function as classrooms and the first college administration building. The academic year began with a student body of 1,003 and a faculty of 55.

About 40 acres were soon sold to the school district for the construction of Grant High School. Today, the 106-acre college campus serves just under 18,000 students, down from a high of 24,000 in the mid-1970s. Among its resources are a planetarium, an art gallery and the only museum dedicated to the history of the San Fernando Valley.

At these and other facilities on campus, the college sponsors programs and activities that are open to non-students. Several are free, including the music department’s Thursday concerts at 11 a.m. Given that, this three-hour tour is designed to take place on Thursdays.

Parking is free in student Lots A or G near Burbank Boulevard, and Lot D off Oxnard Street, even without a permit. Leave a note on your dashboard indicating that you are attending campus activities open to the public. There is a cafeteria on campus, but you could bring a picnic lunch to enjoy on one of the college’s tree-shaded lawns.

For information, call (818) 781-1200.

11 a.m.: Begin with a concert at Monarch Hall, at the center of campus. The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is scheduled Thursday in the Music Recital Hall; the Valley College Studio Jazz Band is set Oct. 21 in Music Room 112, and the Velas-Brazilian Jazz Group will be in the Music Recital Hall on Oct. 28. A schedule of concerts through December is available there.

Noon: Go north from Monarch Hall past the cafeteria to the Art Gallery. On view weekdays except Friday from Oct. 20 through 27, between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m., will be a variety of masks created by artists, art students and other motivated individuals for the “Art Gallery Council Benefit Mask Extravaganza.”

Masks will be available for purchase for about $5 to $20 each, but buyers will have to wait until the evening of Oct. 27 to pick them up, at the gallery’s Halloween Gala. Admission to the party is free. Proceeds have been designated for exhibits and programs organized by the Art Gallery Council.

12:30 p.m.: Walk to the southern end of campus to the planetarium. Its foyer features several informational exhibits on the cosmos. Pick up a schedule of planetarium programs, which often take place in the evening. However, Oct. 19 at noon, Angus A. MacDonald will present “The Winter Sky: A Planetarium Show.” Admission is free. Seating is on a first-come basis.

12:45 p.m.: From the planetarium, walk south past the bungalows to Burbank Boulevard. Across the street from the Valley College Historical Museum is the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center, 13164 Burbank Blvd. Gracing its building is the new 16-by-60-foot mural, “Towards Freedom,” by John Pitman Weber, student assistants and several volunteers.

The mural conveys a sense of the journeys the Jewish people and others have made from slavery to freedom.

1 p.m.: Enter Bungalow 15, the Historical Museum, which is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and by appointment. The museum, in the college’s first administration building, houses vintage photographs, artifacts and documents, including the papers of William Paul Whitsett, who in 1911 founded the city of Van Nuys amid expanses of bean and barley fields.

Also in the museum’s holdings are tools and furnishings from the Lankershim ranch, fossils found in the Valley, an exhibit of plants native to the area, clothing from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and a library of books and pamphlets on the Valley dating from 1821 to the present.

1:30 p.m.: Walk north to the tennis courts and the swimming pool east of the courts. These facilities are available for use by the public for a fee through Valley College’s Community Services Program.

Private or group tennis and swimming lessons are available for children and adults. There are swim teams for young people, and lap swimming and water fitness classes for adults.

1:45 p.m.: Walk south from the swimming pool along Ethel Avenue to the Community Services office in the Field House on the east side of Ethel to find out how to sign up to use the swimming and tennis facilities, or to pick up a brochure on the diverse classes, workshops, seminars and travel programs offered by the Community Services Program.

2 p.m.: On your way home, take Oxnard Street east to Coldwater Canyon Avenue, turn right (south) on Coldwater Canyon and discover “The Great Wall of Los Angeles,” a series of murals in the Tujunga Wash that depict a history of California from 20,000 B.C. to the 1950s. It continues to Burbank Boulevard.