Garage Conversion Shadow Hills, California

Geography

Shadow Hills is in the northwestern Verdugo Mountains, near the western decline of the Crescenta Valley. It is north of the city of Burbank and southeast of the Hansen Dam Reservoir.

It is next to the communities of Lake View Terrace to the north, Sunland and Tujunga to the east, Sun Valley to the south, and Pacoima to the west. The Place is primarily equestrian zoned, one of the last remaining such neighborhoods within the City of Los Angeles.

Shadow Hills is an passable city say for ZIP Code 91040, with Sunland the default city name assigned to 91040.

History

The community began as Hansen Heights when it opened for a planned agreement at $150 an acre in 1907. Its first marketing was an article in The Los Angeles Record which announced a “public house meeting” in the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Building “with Stereoptican Pictures.” Further promotional “illustrated lectures” about these “little farms” were held nightly.

In 1927, “Butterfly Gardens” was a six-acre plot “in the hills a Tiny way off the main traveled road” owned by Mr. and Mrs. Albert Carter which were seeded to wildflowers in the expectation of attracting and “raising” butterflies. In the same year Frank Kenniston owned a grocery in Hansen Heights and also “one of the largest bee apiaries in this share of the country.” Kenniston noted that Hansen Street was yet unpaved and that owners of large tracts were unwilling to subdivide, “thus retarding development.”

In 1946 the Shadow Hills Rodeo grounds were situated “on Wheatland Avenue in the Hansen Heights District of Roscoe,” in a “beautiful setting when the green trees standing gone guards.” The pitch was at 9951 Wheatland Avenue, a parcel that in 2021 was occupied by a six-bedroom, four-bath house.

During the area’s development, some homes were built on hilltops, reachable only “by narrow roads chewed out of the hillsides.” In 1948, Los Angeles City Building and Safety Chief G.E. Morris raised ire once he ordered the property owners on Johanna Street south of Sunland Boulevard to “vacate and demolish” any structure because the roads were so narrow they could not be reached by flare engines. Boyd assured a deputation of mad owners and their families who visited him at Los Angeles City Hall that he would try a compromise which would not work “undue hardship.” The Place became known as “Dad’s Canyon,” which the city claimed was illegal because welcome police, fire, and sanitation could not be provided.

In 1966, the Valley Times reported that “The ‘town’ – such as it is – includes one market, a hitching publicize and a beauty parlor.”

Renaming

Agitation to rename the area began in 1947 considering a increase meeting in the Stonehurst School sports ground called by real estate broker John F. Willey “to discuss the possibility of securing a further post office and delivery district” for Shadow Hills. A second rally featured a melody called “Shadow Hills” by Starr von Fluss.

Dorothy Neely, secretary-manager of the Roscoe Chamber of Commerce said that “Shadow Hills people don’t later the say of Roscoe,” they once others objecting to it as “unimaginative, not euphonious, and not descriptive of the location or the present-day encroachment of the area.”

The name correct was certified by a vote taken in the midst of the four hundred members of the Hansen Heights Improvement Association, who also settled to alter the declare of their running to Shadow Hills Civic Association. The officers were Stanley M. Love, president; Norwood Simmons, vice president; Mrs. Lee Payne, treasurer, and Ronald King, secretary.

Shadow Hills did not get a new post office, but the local address for 1,500 residents was misrepresented from Roscoe to Sunland for properties together with Johanna Street and Stonehurst Avenue.

Freeway off-ramp

In the 1960s a section of the Foothill Freeway was mapped from Sunland southwest through Lakeview Terrace to Van Nuys Boulevard. The Shadow Hills Property Owners Association fought next to the freeway mainly because its members, mostly horse enthusiasts, feared their rural environment
would be spoiled, particularly if a freeway bridge were built exceeding the Tujunga Wash.