PHOTOS: San Fernando Valley History Digital Library: Owensmouth High School Football team, 1924;LA River in N.Hollywood and N. Hollywood at Vineland Ave. bridge, 1938.

More memories of the San Fernando Valley in the 1930s and 40s from Hap Rogers:

“The concrete lined Los Angeles River, back in the mid 1930’s, was only a small muddy ditch
that started out in the west valley and went along the north side of
Canoga Park High School, near where the school had their outside GreekTheatre. As it headed east, we kids used to go down and catch crawdads where it went past the old brick yard near Van Alden St in Reseda. From there it continued on east past Balboa Ave to where the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin is now located.

As I can remember, it was the flood
of the winter of ’37 – ’38 that did all the damage to North Hollywood.
Many lives were lost. I was in the 4-H back
in those days and our club leader, Lyle Harriman, took several of us to
North Hollywood to see the damage the storm had done. It looked like a
small Hurricane Katrina had gone through there.

Getting back to the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin, I believe that
winter storm of ’37-’38 is what prompted the building of the dam and
basin. Much of the property in the basin was owned by the Ghiglia family
and was farmed by my brother-in-law in partnership with Frank Ghiglia.
There he had many acres of alfalfa, banana squash, the big crop being
tomatoes for the then, San Fernando Cannery. In the early
’60’s, they leased the norththwest corner of the land at Balboa &
Victory Blvd to farmers raising sweet corn. Their main entrance to their
farm area was at Victory Blvd just over the railroad tracks from
Hayvenhurst Ave.

Back during WW II, the Army had a Nike Missile site set up
there on the south side of Victory Blvd where I think Woodley Ave ended.

In the late ’50’s, or early ’60’s the City of Los Angeles wanted the Ghiglia
land for a recreation area and they raised the electric rates so high that
it was not profitable for them to pump water for irrigating from their
own well, so the Ghiglias sold out to the city. They
also moved here to Nevada, bought a ranch not far from
us at the old town of Weeks, where the Pony Express once stopped, and
not far from the old Army Post of Fort Churchill, of the old pioneer
days.

Shortly after that in 1964, my brother-in-law and his wife, (my
wife’s sister) sold their house on Calvert St just a block east of
Fallbrook Ave, in what was in those days known as Walnut Acres, in
Woodland Hills, and also moved here near us in Nevada.

During and shortly after WW2, San Fernando Valley was growing.
Gone were the fields of sugar beets, tomatoes, alfalfa, wheat fields,
orange and walnut groves, olive trees, chicken ranches, cattle ranches,
and in came the tracts of houses, factories, storage buildings, etc.
The farming in the valley was through.”