Tujunga Wash

Tujunga Wash. Yesterday and Today. , Following Spanish and Mexican rule, Ex Rancho Mission de San Fernando, the land today known as the San Fernando Valley, was sold by Governor Pio Pico to Don Eugolio de Celis for $14,000. After California Statehood in 1849, the subdivision of the prime agricultural lands of the Valley began. Wheat was the predominant crop, with peach orchards thriving from the abundant ground water in the area near the Tujunga Wash. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the San Fernando Valley was sparsely populated, with fewer than 3,000 people on a plain of more than 200 square miles. , After William Mulholland engineered an aqueduct to bring in water from the Sierra Nevada in 1913, and annexation by the City of Los Angeles in 1915, development in the San Fernando Valley began to boom. Population increased to 21,000 by 1920, and 112,000 by 1940. After World War II, the Valley became the nation's fastest growing region. There have been eight major floods in the Valley since 1861. The 1938 flood, which broke the Tujunga Wash levee, was one of the most devastating. The construction of flood control channels alleviated most of the flooding problems but, along with the 1950s housing tract expansion, changed the face of the Valley forever. By 1960, population topped 800,000. At the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, more than 1.7 million people lived in the densely populated urban environment of the San Fernando Valley.