Park Mural to Depict History of the Valley

When it’s finished, a mural being painted on a 6-foot-high wall in Las Palmas Park will be among the largest in the San Fernando Valley.

“After the mural in the wash on Coldwater Canyon [Boulevard], I think it’s the . . . biggest,” said Mission Hills muralist Lalo Garcia, who with his colleague Otto “Tito” Sturcke and several teenagers from San Fernando has worked on the mural since December.

The mural is about 75% complete. Work has been hindered in the past few weeks by sporadic rain and high winds, but Garcia said he hopes to finish it by the end of February.

What does the more than 400-foot-long mural depict? A better question would be: What doesn’t it include? Over its 26 17-foot-long panels, the mural tells the story of the city of San Fernando from the mission era to the present.

“We’re trying to depict certain events that helped shape the city and the San Fernando Valley,” said Garcia, whose historical concept won out over other designs submitted to the city for consideration.

The first panel of the mural depicts the San Fernando Mission and Franciscan friars who came to the Valley in the 1790s.

Other panels show some of the region’s pioneer settlers, including Native Americans, members of the Lopez family (who built one of the first buildings in the city, the historic Lopez Adobe), Spanish landholder Eulogio de Celis and former state Sens. Charles Maclay and George K. Porter, who at one time owned most of the land in the northern San Fernando Valley.

Other panels depict the Los Angeles Aqueduct, built by engineer William Mulholland, and the destructive 1971 Sylmar earthquake.