Lankershim Train Depot

Lankershim Train Depot. . , Laying Tracks, and a Foundation for the Future , Land is the secret to Southern California's prosperity, but it isn't worth much without a way to move the goods and services it generates. This modest wooden building on a small parcel of land is a portal to the history of how the San Fernando Valley grew and prospered., The Lankershim depot laid the foundation for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority here. The depot is a link from past to future, a community center and museum to the underpinnings of the Valley. Rocks that built the Los Angeles Harbor passed through here; fruit grown in the Valley was piled here in crates to be shipped around the country. And in 1914, Cecil B. DeMille and his film crew stopped here on their way north to shoot the seminal film The Squaw Man., A Big Need to Haul Big Harvests , Until the depot opened in 1895, the Chatsworth Limited made only one freight stop a day in Lankershim/Toluca; human arrivals still had to get there by stagecoach. A horse and buggy trip to downtown Los Angeles and back took three days, over what is now the Hollywood Freeway. Back then, it was just the Cahuenga Pass, a one-lane dirt road paved with peach and apricot pits that fell from the jostling loads of fruit. There was plenty of fruit to move. Lankershim was known as "Home of the Peach," and apricots, walnuts, and cherries weren't far behind., The biggest employer around was the Bonner Fruit Company, clocking in a million pounds of fruit a year, and shipping them around the country from the depot. Diamond Walnuts had its own operation, too, conveniently close to the depot., The Red Cars Come to the Valley , A train known as the "Toluca Flyer" was delivering passengers to the station at the turn of the century. In 1911, interurban Red Cars were making travel between the Valley and downtown a lot cheaper and faster , 40 cents round trip and 45 minutes each way., So central was the depot to local life that in 1919, a gazebo was built alongside, and on Sunday afternoons a band played patriotic John Philip Sousa favorites. Now passenger trains joined freight trains in stopping here, and Phil's Diner opened in 1928, feeding passengers in a replica of a railroad car , another one of those amusing Los Angeles buildings built to look like derbies or hot dogs. Even people who never dined there knew the pink and black diner from its appearance in movies and TV. L.A. Weekly praised it as the city's "friendliest heartburn." In the late 1990s the diner was purchased and subsequently moved to its present location at 5230 Lankershim where it was extensively renovated., Los Angeles' car culture replaced the Red Car, which made its last stop at the depot in 1952. Local wits called it “A Streetcar Named Expire."