4th Largest Unofficial City in America!

Map of SFV Communities

Here’s a Google Earth map of the Valley! You can see all 224 square miles of SFV. We are over 4x as big as San Francisco, which is only 49 square miles! Think of it another way — four San Franciscos would fit inside the Valley! I tell you, we’re BIG! We’d be the 4th largest city in the US.

From Glendale to Calabasas, it’s 24 miles corner to corner. If the 134/101 freeways are clear (like on a Sunday morning) it will take 30 minutes to cross the length of SFV. From the northern tip of Sylmar where Foothill Blvd. begins, to the southern interchange of the 405 and 101 ( the two busiest freeways in the nation), the width is 15 miles.

SFV Granny creeps across the Valley via the standstill on 405 every morning to her teaching job. What should be a 15 minute drive can take 2 hours if one oversleeps! How often she thinks of those who called this home 200 years ago, 6000 years ago, or 50 years ago as they made their way across the Valley. How long did it take them?

Interactive Map_ City of Los Angeles incorporated under American law April 4, 1850

It was while sitting stuck on many different occasions on the elevated viewpoint that one has from the 405 that SFV Granny conceived of this website. She had lots of time to look out over the Valley and wonder what it had been like, and what was going on today.

There are only six independent cities in SFV. Otherwise, every place else was annexed to the City of Los Angeles to gain access to water over 100 years ago — the water brought from Owens Valley and spilling over the Cascades at Sylmar. They have their individual zipcodes and 42 community/neighborhood names, but they are still actually part of Los Angeles. In other words, about 80% of the Valley “belongs” to LA. After World War II, the innovations in housing — and the room to experiment — would make SFV the cradle of middle class suburbia. As the Baby Boomers now retire, is the experiment in creating a strong middle class over? We only have to look at the changes happening right here in the Valley to glean that answer.

Incorporated, independent cities
Unincorporated communities/neighborhoods
Communities of the San Fernando Valley