Developers buy Lankershim ranch
Sept. 26, 1909: “Largest and Most Notable Deal Ever Made Here,” read the headline in The Times as the newspaper announced that “a syndicate of local capitalists” had purchased “the great Lankershim ranch of 48,000 acres in the heart of the fertile San Fernando Valley.”
The syndicate, The Times said, would “proceed to subdivide and sell it in small parcels to home-makers,” adding that “surveyors will go into the field soon and towns will be laid out, a boulevard running the entire length of the ranch will be constructed, together with 50 or 60 miles of ... roads.”
The paper failed to say that the purchasers included Times Publisher Harrison Gray Otis and son-in-law Harry Chandler.
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