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44-520: Shadow Hills is in the northwestern Verdugo Mountains , near the western end of the Crescenta Valley . It is north of the city of Burbank and southeast of the Hansen Dam Reservoir. It is adjacent to the communities of Lake View Terrace to the north, Sunland and Tujunga to the east, Sun Valley to the south, and Pacoima to the west. The area is primarily equestrian zoned , one of

88-475: A Pacific Electric car directly to the summit, but Henry E. Huntington did not approve of this scheme. The railway was to have four or five stations along the incline and a large visitor's center at the summit. Several months after the initial proposal, the route was altered to run up the west side of Verdugo Canyon from a hoped-for extension of the Pacific Electric up Verdugo Canyon to Montrose. Interest in

132-457: A compromise which would not work "undue hardship." The area became known as "Dad's Canyon," which the city claimed was illegal because adequate police, fire, and sanitation could not be provided. In 1966, the Valley Times reported that "The 'town' – such as it is – includes one market , a hitching post and a beauty parlor ." Agitation to rename the area began in 1947 with a mass meeting in

176-453: A fire frequency at a given site of no shorter than several decades, or perhaps longer, although there is variability in the tolerance of different species. Repeated shorter intervals between fires promote so-called "type conversion", in which the shrubby species are replaced by grasses, particularly non-native grasses, and other weedy species. The Verdugo Mountains have been subject to repeated wildfires in historical times. Major occurrences in

220-564: A freeway bridge were built over the Tujunga Wash . A Hansen Heights school district was formed in 1912, with M.W. Fuhrman as one of the trustees and E.D. Lamb as clerk . By 1931, Hansen Heights School had become a part of the Los Angeles City school system. In June of that year it was announced that Hansen Heights stood "highest of any high or elementary school in the city of Los Angeles in thrift " because every child "has an account in

264-541: A new post office, but the local address for 1,500 residents was changed from Roscoe to Sunland for properties between Johanna Street and Stonehurst Avenue. In the 1960s a section of the Foothill Freeway was mapped from Sunland southwest through Lakeview Terrace to Van Nuys Boulevard . The Shadow Hills Property Owners Association fought against the freeway mainly because its members, mostly horse enthusiasts, feared their rural environment would be spoiled, particularly if

308-409: A particular fire regime , which is characterized by intensity and seasonality, but most importantly, by the frequency of fires. In the southern California chaparral, natural frequencies of 30 to 40 years are typical, with some areas going as long as 100 years without fires and others burning more frequently. It has been estimated the chaparral plant community can persist over the long term only with

352-528: A planned settlement at $ 150 an acre in 1907. Its first publicity was an article in The Los Angeles Record which announced a "public land meeting" in the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Building "with Stereoptican Pictures." Further promotional "illustrated lectures" about these "little farms" were held nightly. In 1927, "Butterfly Gardens" was a six-acre plot "in the hills a little way off

396-756: A power line downed by high winds, burned from the northern edge of the range southward over to crest to consume homes in Glendale. A fire in November, 1980, also called the La Tuna Canyon Fire, burned 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) in the northern and western portions of the range. Since 2000, three major fires have occurred in the Verdugo Mountains. In September, 2002, the Mountain Fire burned over two days approximately 750 acres (300 ha) above Glendale, largely on

440-637: A small, rugged mountain range of the Transverse Ranges system in Los Angeles County, California . Located just south of the western San Gabriel Mountains , the Verdugo Mountains region incorporates the cities of Burbank , Glendale , Pasadena , and La Cañada Flintridge ; the unincorporated communities of Altadena and La Crescenta-Montrose ; as well as the City of Los Angeles neighborhood of Sunland-Tujunga . Surrounded entirely by urban development,

484-626: Is now the Verdugo Hills Golf Course. The Verdugo Mountains were named for Jose Maria Verdugo , holder of the Rancho San Rafael land grant , which covered the mountains during California's Spanish and Mexican periods . On October 20, 1784 Pedro Fages , the military governor of Alta California , granted Jose Maria Verdugo permission to use the rancho, known officially by the name San Rafael but informally called "La Zanja" by Verdugo. The rancho's boundaries were primarily defined by

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528-667: The Los Angeles County Fire Department began a county-wide program of building fire breaks (or more properly, fuel breaks ) to slow the spread of fire, and by 1923 the initial breaks had been constructed in the Verdugos. In 1934, the City of Glendale built a 60-foot lookout tower on Verdugo Peak, which was staffed with an observer until it closed in the mid-1950s. In order to conduct the work necessary to build fire breaks and roads, temporary construction camps were located throughout

572-586: The San Fernando Valley ; at their southeastern end the Verdugo Mountains are separated from the San Rafael Hills by the Verdugo Wash . The highest summit is the informally named Verdugo Peak (3,126 feet (953 m)), located near the center of the range and rising to approximately 2,200 feet (670 m) above its southern base. Other peaks include Tongva Peak (2,656 feet ), recently named in honor of

616-527: The Tongva (Gabrielino) people, the original inhabitants of much of the Los Angeles Basin , Santa Monica Mountains , and San Gabriel Valley areas. Other informally named peaks are Mount La Tuna on the north end and Mount Thom on the south end of the range. With the exception of Mount La Tuna, all these summits, as well as several others, are occupied by communications towers. The Verdugo Mountains lie within

660-738: The chaparral plant community, as defined by Munz and later authors, including Sawyer et al. This dense, shrub-dominated community of the California chaparral and woodlands is more highly developed on the north-facing slopes than on the drier, hotter south-facing slopes. Among the shrub species that characterize this community, prominent in the Verdugos are laurel sumac ( Malosma laurina ), toyon ( Heteromeles arbutifolia ), poison oak ( Toxicodendron diversilobum ), chamise ( Adenostoma fasciculatum ) and two species of California-lilac ( Ceanothus crassifolius and Ceanothus oliganthus ). Native trees are restricted to protected canyons, especially on

704-517: The 1955 La Tuna Canyon fire, however, indicates that at least some of these roads were in place by that date. The Verdugo Mountains are being considered as part of the proposed Rim of the Valley Corridor National Park . Other than the Foothill Freeway (I-210) and the nearly parallel La Tuna Canyon Road, both of which traverse only the northwestern tip of the range, the Verdugo Mountains are crossed by no paved roads. By contrast,

748-610: The Los Angeles basin. Uplift along the Verdugo fault may total approximately 2.5 km (1.6 mi), at a minimum rate of 1.1 km (0.68 mi) per million years since 2.3 million years ago, moving the crystalline rocks of the Verdugo Mountains up and over younger Tertiary and Quaternary sediments to the south. The Verdugo Mountains are, therefore, young and rapidly rising, reflected in their steep topography and rapid rates of erosion. The Verdugo Mountains lie almost entirely within

792-527: The Shadow Hills Rodeo grounds were situated "on Wheatland Avenue in the Hansen Heights District of Roscoe," in a "beautiful setting with the green trees standing like guards." The arena was at 9951 Wheatland Avenue, a parcel that in 2021 was occupied by a six-bedroom, four-bath house. During the area's development, some homes were built on hilltops, reachable only "by narrow roads chewed out of

836-590: The Stonehurst School auditorium called by real estate broker John F. Willey "to discuss the possibility of securing a new post office and delivery district" for Shadow Hills. A second rally featured a song called "Shadow Hills" by Starr von Fluss. Dorothy Neely, secretary-manager of the Roscoe Chamber of Commerce said that "Shadow Hills people don't like the name of Roscoe," they with others objecting to it as "unimaginative, not euphonious , and not descriptive of

880-503: The Verdugo Mountains represent an isolated wildlife island and are in large part under public ownership in the form of undeveloped parkland. The mountains are used primarily for recreation in the form of hiking and mountain biking, and as the site of communications installations on the highest peaks. The mountains arise directly from the eastern floor of the San Fernando Valley , exaggerating their height from some vantages. Beginning with foothills, they rapidly rise to rugged sections, with

924-582: The Verdugo Mountains, the Arroyo Seco and the Los Angeles River , with the boundary following north along the east bank of the river and wrapping westerly around Griffith Park to a point near the Travel Town Museum in the park. One of the earliest attempts to access and develop the interior of the Verdugo Mountains was the 1912 proposal by Colonel Lewis Ginger to build a cable incline railroad to

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968-535: The beginning of the Pliocene has been estimated to be on the order of 7 kilometers (4.3 mi). The Verdugo fault and Sierra Madre thrust are part of a complex system of faults that accommodate some of this shortening and generally become younger to the south, with the Verdugo Fault possibly being the youngest member of this system and forming the current boundary between this portion of the western Transverse Ranges and

1012-478: The cable railway continued for about a year, but the project was abandoned before a company could be formed, largely as the result of the Pacific Electric's decision not to build the Montrose extension. Fire is a natural component of the chaparral ecosystem, and the plants that comprise it are largely adapted to survive fire or to reproduce after it. More specifically, the members of this plant community are adapted to

1056-428: The corporate boundaries of the cities of Glendale , Burbank , and Los Angeles . The neighborhood of La Crescenta , most of which lies within Glendale, is adjacent to the range's northern end, as are the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Tujunga, Sunland , Shadow Hills , and Sun Valley (the last of which includes La Tuna Canyon). The Verdugo Mountains consist of an east-west-trending antiformal fault block , bounded on

1100-475: The crest. Annual rainfall totals are highly variable from year to year, with the higher totals usually in El Nino years. Most of the rain falls between November and March during periodic frontal passages. The mountains were part of the indigenous Tongva people 's homelands for over 7,000 years, with villages at some springs in the canyons. The village of Wikangna was located in the area, possibly located at what

1144-586: The crystalline basement rocks exposed to the north in that portion of the San Gabriel Mountains south of the San Gabriel Fault. These consist of gneiss , and gneissic diorite and quartz diorite , intruded by irregular bodies of equigranular granitic rocks, predominantly quartz diorite and granodiorite , with accompanying pegmatite and aplite . Exposed rocks in the Shadow Hills neighborhood at

1188-523: The extreme northwestern end of the Verdugos are typically marine sedimentary rocks of Miocene age, predominantly sandstone and shale . The Verdugo Mountains are part of the western Transverse Ranges , which have risen in the last 7 million years as the result of contractional deformation resulting from transpressional motion and rotation of crustal blocks in the "Big Bend" region of the San Andreas Fault . The amount of crustal shortening since

1232-549: The fire roads and, most notably, in the Fire Warden's Grove, established in the wake of a wildfire in 1927. Except for a tenuous link to the large wild area in the San Gabriel Mountains through Big Tujunga Wash at their northwestern end, the Verdugo Mountains are an urban wildlife island completely surrounded by development. Among the large mammals, coyote ( Canis latrans ) and mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus ) are

1276-401: The fire-prone areas of the county. In the Verdugo Mountains, Construction Camp #2 was located in the lower reaches of Deer Canyon, at the end of present-day Beaudry Blvd, for a period during the late 1930s and early 1940s. It is difficult to determine from published sources the dates of construction for the fire roads so important to present-day recreational use of the mountains. The report of

1320-405: The highest peaks topping 3,000'. The northwest-trending range is approximately 8 miles (13 km) long by 3.25 miles (5.23 km) wide, and roughly parallels the southern front of the San Gabriel Mountains at a distance of 1 mile (1.6 km) to 2 miles (3.2 km), with the Crescenta Valley lying between the two. The southern front of the range forms part of the northeastern boundary of

1364-409: The hillsides." In 1948, Los Angeles City Building and Safety Chief G.E. Morris raised ire when he ordered the property owners on Johanna Street south of Sunland Boulevard to "vacate and demolish" any structure because the roads were so narrow they could not be reached by fire engines. Boyd assured a deputation of angry owners and their families who visited him at Los Angeles City Hall that he would seek

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1408-649: The last remaining such neighborhoods within the City of Los Angeles. Shadow Hills is an acceptable city name for ZIP Code 91040, with Sunland the default city name assigned to 91040. As of the 2000 census, Shadow Hills had a population of 3,739 people. The racial breakdown was 79% Caucasian, 14% Latino, 3% Asian American, and 1% African American. In 2009, the Los Angeles Times ' s "Mapping L.A." project supplied these Shadow Hills neighborhood statistics: population: 13,098; median household income: $ 82,796. The community began as Hansen Heights when it opened for

1452-521: The location or the present-day development of the area." The name change was approved by a vote taken among the four hundred members of the Hansen Heights Improvement Association, who also decided to change the name of their organization to Shadow Hills Civic Association. The officers were Stanley M. Love, president; Norwood Simmons, vice president; Mrs. Lee Payne, treasurer, and Ronald King, secretary. Shadow Hills did not receive

1496-508: The main traveled road" owned by Mr. and Mrs. Albert Carter which were seeded to wildflowers in the expectation of attracting and "raising" butterflies . In the same year Frank Kenniston owned a grocery in Hansen Heights and also "one of the largest bee apiaries in this part of the country." Kenniston noted that Hansen Street was still unpaved and that owners of large tracts were unwilling to subdivide, "thus retarding development." In 1946

1540-496: The most common; mountain lions ( Puma concolor ) and black bears ( Ursus americanus ) have occasionally been reported. The many rodent species support a population of western rattlesnakes ( Crotalus viridis ). Of the numerous bird species present, the most characteristic of the chaparral here, and throughout California, is the small, seldom seen but often heard wrentit ( Chamaea fasciata ). With its call of three or four chirps followed by an accelerating trill, often likened to

1584-675: The overcrowded and virtually all-white Mount Gleason Junior High School in Sunland to the more diversified Maclay Junior High in Pacoima was opposed by the Shadow Hills Homeowners Association. The Los Angeles school board approved the boundary switch in a 4–3 vote on July 14, 1966. Shadow Hills is represented by: Verdugo Mountains The Verdugo Mountains , also known as the Verdugo Hills or simply The Verdugos , are

1628-411: The range contains more than 25 miles (40 km) of graded and well maintained fire roads that are used extensively by hikers and mountain bike riders. Several abandoned and overgrown fire roads and ridge-top fire breaks are used recreationally as well. Trails, in the sense of engineered and maintained footpaths, are few, the most notable being the 2.2 mile (3.5 km)-long La Tuna Canyon Trail, which

1672-623: The school savings bank." Evangeline Hymer was the principal . The school, at 9900 Wheatland Avenue, was declared surplus in 1945 and the property put up for sale. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) today serves Shadow Hills. Not one LAUSD school is inside of Shadow Hills. Students must travel outside of Shadow Hills to Sun Valley for Stonehurst Elementary School, Maclay Middle School in Pacoima, and Verdugo Hills High School in Tujunga. A 1966 plan to require Shadow Hills students to switch from

1716-541: The shadier north slope of the range, where soil moisture levels are higher. Coast live oak ( Quercus agrifolia ), California bay laurel ( Umbellularia californica ), California sycamore ( Platanus racemosa ), California walnut ( Juglans californica ), and several species of willow ( Salix spp.) are the most common native trees. Non-native trees, particularly pines ( Pinus spp.), cypress ( Cupressus spp.), locust ( Robinia pseudoacacia ), and Australian eucalyptus ( Eucalyptus spp.) have been planted locally along

1760-417: The sound of a dropped ping-pong ball, the wrentit provides the most characteristic sound of the chaparral. The Verdugo Mountains have warm, dry summers and cool wet winters. Snow infrequently falls along the crest during the coldest winter storms, but melts rapidly. Annual average precipitation increases with elevation (due to the orographic lift effect), from 17-21 inches at the base to about 24–28 inches at

1804-586: The south by the Verdugo Fault, a north-dipping reverse fault , and on the north by the Sierra Madre thrust fault near the front of the San Gabriel Mountains, thus including the sediment-covered Crescenta Valley within the Verdugo Mountains Block. The Verdugo Fault lies slightly south of the topographic range front and is completely covered by sediments. The rocks within the Verdugo Mountains block are almost entirely igneous and metamorphic similar to

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1848-530: The southern side of the range. The Harvard Fire started on September 29, 2005, and consumed 1,024 acres (414 ha) both north and south sides of the range north of Burbank during a six-day period. In September, 2017, the La Tuna fire started north of the Verdugos, jumping Interstate 210 forcing the closure of it, burning both the north and south face of the ranges. The fire ultimately destroyed four homes and 7,003 acres (2,834 ha) of land. Beginning in 1921,

1892-540: The summit of Mount Verdugo, now known as Mount Thom. The proposed Glendale & Verdugo Mountain Railway was to run in a straight line from the Pacific Electric's Casa Verdugo station at the top of Brand Boulevard to the summit of Mount Verdugo, employing cars with stepped seating similar to those of Angels Flight on Bunker Hill in Los Angeles. Initially, Colonel Ginger had proposed that his cable railway would lift

1936-600: The twentieth century include the December, 1927 Burbank Canyon Fire, which started in Haines Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains and burned south into the range, consuming approximately 100 homes in Burbank's Sunset Canyon. The La Tuna Canyon Fire of November, 1955 burned over almost the entire western portion of the range, ultimately destroying approximately 4,500 acres (1,800 ha). The Whiting Woods Fire of March, 1964, started by

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