Toluca Lake, Los Angeles
Toluca Lake, Los Angeles
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Toluca Lake, Los Angeles

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Toluca Lake, Los Angeles

Toluca Lake is a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California, located in the San Fernando Valley 12 miles (19 km) northwest of downtown. The name is also given to a private natural lake fed by wells and maintained by neighboring property owners. Prior to the paving of the Los Angeles River in 1938 and L.A. well extraction in the late 19th and 20th century which lowered the water table, Toluca Lake was fed by artesian springs.

The history of Toluca Lake can be traced to the days of the Tongva Indians, followed by Spanish colonization and Mexican independence. Toluca Lake was part of the early rancho system. The original Toluca Lake was divided, with the neighborhood being known as Forman Toluca Ranch. In 1923, investors bought and developed the land as "Toluca Lake Park".

The neighborhood has had notable residents. Comedian Bob Hope was a longtime resident of Toluca Lake, as were Audie Murphy and Jonathan Winters. Legendary film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold lived there from 1938 to 1957, right on the lake. Famed actress Bette Davis built a house there. Bing Crosby had a house later owned by Andy Griffith and Jerry Van Dyke. Phil Everly, Mary Astor, Roy Disney, Amelia Earhart, and Frank Sinatra also had houses there. More recently, it has been the home of entertainers such as Hilary Duff, Joseph Campanella, Steve Carell, Wayne Knight, Joe Mantegna, Andy Garcia, Richard Zanuck, Ray Romano, Rick Dees, Patricia Heaton, Melissa McCarthy, Macaulay Culkin, Denzel Washington, and Peter Bogdanovich.

The Tongva people have lived in the San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles Basin for 8,000 years. The Tongvan settlement Cahuenga used the springs and marsh in the Toluca Lake locale for water, fishing, hunting, harvesting, and building supplies (tule plants).

After the Spanish conquest in the 1790s of Las Californias, the San Fernando Valley, including the "Toluca Lake locale", became the extended property of the Mission San Fernando Rey de España. After the 1823 Independence of Mexico, the secularization of missions in Alta California included the issuing of a Mexican land grant for Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando. The extreme eastern end of the lake was within the 1843 Rancho Providencia grant to Vincente de la Osa. In 1862, Pío Pico sold his share of the Ex-San Fernando Mission land, the entire southern half of the Valley below Roscoe Boulevard, to Isaac Lankershim (operating as the San Fernando Farm Homestead Association) in 1869. In 1873, Isaac Lankershim's son, James Boon Lankershim, and future son-in-law, Isaac Newton Van Nuys, took over management of the property, including the lake at Toluca. During the 1880s, the San Fernando Farm Homestead Association was succeeded by the Los Angeles Farm & Milling Company.[citation needed]

In 1893, a petition was filed with the U.S. Postal Service for the area's first post office, to be named "Toluca Post Office". General Charles Forman, a wealthy local landowner and one of the proponents of the petition, later stated that he had chosen the name "Toluca" from a Paiute word meaning "fertile" or "beautiful" valley. Though part of a larger area traditionally called "Lankershim" after a colonel of the same name—and with a Southern Pacific Railroad train station named "Lankershim" that also opened in 1893 across from the post office—Forman called his own ranch and the surrounding land "Toluca".

One of the wealthiest men in Nevada, Forman had made his fortune starting from nothing, first in mining, then cattle ranching, and then lumber. Falling in love with and marrying Los Angeles native Mary Agnes Gray, he soon moved to the area in the late 1880s and started the Kern River Company, a power company which delivered electricity from generators at the Kern River to Los Angeles. He also bought a large parcel of rich farm land, which included much of modern-day Toluca Lake and at least the western portion of the "ancient and historical" marshy pond now called Toluca Lake. By 1923, the Forman Toluca Lake Ranch was a flourishing producer of peaches, apples, and walnuts.

In 1923, investors bought and developed the land as Toluca Lake Park. This initial venture failed, but a new group soon took over, renaming the firm as the Toluca Lake Company. With a "vision of creating a first 'bedroom community' for Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley", the company formally changed the name of the community to simply Toluca Lake and adopted as their logo the "swan on rippled water" image associated with the community today. The name Lankershim also was considered for the town. Colonel J. B. Lankershim established the town site of Toluca at the eastern edge of the family's vast holdings in 1888. The town name was changed from Toluca to Lankershim in 1896. By 1927, the lure of Hollywood inspired local merchants to launch a campaign to change the community's name to North Hollywood. The original town site of Toluca is now part of Toluca Lake.

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