Happy centennial, Van Nuys

On Feb. 22, 1911, trains from Los Angeles delivered the first buyers of vacant lots to the new town of Van Nuys. Named for an L.A. developer and hotelier who married into a ranching family, Van Nuys was the first farm town to be subdivided out of the former Lankershim wheat fields that covered almost half of the San Fernando Valley. Marian (later Reseda) and Owensmouth (later Canoga Park) opened soon after; in 1915 the valley voted 681-25 to join the city of Los Angeles.

If you suspect this was all about the value of land rising with the arrival of water in Mulholland's aqueduct from the Owens Valley, you'd be right. The new settlers in Van Nuys learned quickly, however, that water was not all a blessing. The city-slicker land speculators who decided where to locate Van Nuys put it right in the way of the drainage from Pacoima Canyon. You'd think the dry wash filled with sand and boulders would have clued them in, but no. Flooding has bedeviled Van Nuys most of the time since. Here's the train station half-submerged three years after Van Nuys' founding.

Here's the same spot from both pictures in an LA Observed video from last year.

Photos: Top, Los Angeles Public Library; Flooding, Oviatt Library Digital Archives, CSUN