Garage Conversion Simi Valley, California

Geography

Simi Valley is a city located in the certainly southeast corner of Ventura County, bordering the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, and is a allocation of the Greater Los Angeles Area. The city of Simi Valley basically consists of the eponymous valley itself. The city of Simi Valley borders the Santa Susana Mountains to the north, the Simi Hills to the east and south, and is against Thousand Oaks to the southwest and Moorpark to the west. Simi Valley is associated to the approachable San Fernando Valley by the Santa Susana Pass in the extreme east of Simi Valley. Simi Valley is located at 34°16’16” North, 118°44’22” West (34.271078, −118.739428) with an elevation of 700–1,000 ft (210–300 m) above sea level. The syncline Simi Valley is located in the western part of the region called the Transverse Ranges. The valley is amid the Santa Susana Mountains to the north and Simi Hills to the east and south. While the Santa Susana Mountains cut off the valley from the Los Padres National Forest in the north, the Simi Hills cut off it from Conejo Valley in the south. In the extreme east is Rocky Peak, one of Santa Susana Mountains’ highest peaks, which is a dividing line amongst Ventura County to the west and Los Angeles County to the east. On the other side of the valley, in the extreme west side of Simi Valley is Mount McCoy, which may be most known for its 12 ft. concrete mad that sits at its peak. The physiographical valley is a structural as skillfully as a topographic depression. The Simi Valley, just as adjoining San Fernando Valley, owes its existence and touch to the faulting and folding of the rocks. It is really a structural valley and not wholly the conduct yourself of erosion. It is drained by the Calleguas Creek and also its principal tributary, Conejo Creek. Both of these originate in the Santa Susana Mountains.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 42.2 sq mi (109.4 km), comprising 41.5 sq mi (107.4 km²) of land and 0.77 sq mi (2.0 km), or 1.81%, of it is water. Simi Valley is located northwest of the Los Angeles neighborhood of Chatsworth and approximately 30 mi (50 km) from Downtown Los Angeles, 380 mi (610 km) south of San Francisco, 160 mi (260 km) north of San Diego, and 350 mi (560 km) south of Sacramento. Commutes to Los Angeles are usually via the Ronald Reagan Freeway (Highway 118) or the Southern California Metrolink commuter train, which makes several daily trips from Simi Valley. Simi Valley has a mediterranean climate. Temperate variations between hours of daylight and night tend to be relatively big. The want annual temperature is 64.1 degrees (17.8 °C), while the annual precipitation is 18.39 inches (467 mm). The precipitation remains less than one inch for seven months – April until October, – while the precipitation exceeds four inches in the two wettest months – January and February. While the point toward temperature is at its lowest at 53.6 degrees (12.0 °C) in December, the set sights on temperature in July and August exceeds 76 degrees (24 °C).

Simi Valley has been the victim of several natural disasters, including the flood of 1967, the storm of 1983, the 1988 lightning strike, as well as the 1994 Northridge earthquake and numerous wildfires.

Climate

Simi Valley has a hot and ascetic climate during summer in imitation of mean temperatures tend to play-act the 70s. Wildfires accomplish also occur here. The city’s climate cools during winter considering mean temperatures tend to play a role the 50s. Because of its relatively low elevation, the Simi Hills typically experience rainy, mild winters. Snow is rare in the Simi Hills, even in the highest areas. The warmest month of the year is August once an average maximum temperature of 96 °F (36 °C), while the coldest month of the year is December with an average minimum temperature of 38 °F (3 °C). Temperature variations with night and daylight tend to be relatively large during summer, with a difference that can accomplish 38 °F (21 °C), and sober during winter like an average difference of 29 °F (16 °C). The annual average precipitation in Simi Valley is 17.9 inches. Winter months tend to be wetter than summer months. The wettest month of the year is February as soon as an average rainfall of 4.8 inches. Simi Valley gets 18 inches of rain per year, while the United States average is 37. Snowfall is 0 inches, while the U.S. average is 25 inches of snow per year. The number of days in imitation of measurable precipitation is 25. On average, there are 277 sunny days in Simi Valley per year. The July tall is approximately 96 °F (36 °C). The January low is 39 °F (4 °C). The baby book low is 18 degrees Fahrenheit (−8 °C) (recorded in February 1989) and the record tall is 116 degrees Fahrenheit (47 °C) (recorded in August 1985). The prevailing wind processing is southwest, and the average wind zeal is 7–11 mph (11–18 km/h).

Natural hazards

An aspect of Simi Valley’s location, situated versus the Simi Hills, is that it lies in a high-risk Place for the wildfires that sweep through Southern California’s mountain ranges all few years. Simi Valley is along with at risk for earthquakes. The valley is amongst faults; the closest ones swine the Santa Rosa Fault to the Northwest, the Northridge Hills Fault to the Northeast, and the Chatsworth Fault to the South. In 1994, portions of Simi Valley time-honored significant damage from the Northridge earthquake. See Nuclear Accident at SSFL for information upon the accident and joined risk(s) to residents.

Wildfires

In autumn 2003, the Simi Fire burned nearly 108,000 acres. A 2005 ember started upon September 28 and burned an estimated 7,000 acres (30 km). On September 29, the ember was estimated to be 17,000 acres (70 km²). More than 1,000 firefighters worked neighboring the tricky engagement of teetotal brush, low humidity and temperatures in the high 90s along the extraction that divides Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The flare was higher brought below control and extinguished, without colossal injury. Three homes were at a loose end in outlying areas, but none within the city limits.

History

Chumash/pre-colonial period

Simi Valley was taking into account inhabited by the Chumash people, who also settled much of the region from the Salinas Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains, with their presence dating assist thousands of years. Around 5,000 years ago these tribes began executive acorns, and harvesting local marshland plants. Roughly 2,000 years later, as hunting and fishing techniques improved, the population increased significantly. Shortly after this aggressive increase a precious stone money system arose, increasing the viability of the region by offsetting fluctuations in easy to realize to resources relating to climate changes. The indigenous people who inhabited Simi Valley spoke an interior dialect of the Chumash language, called Ventureño.

Simi Valley’s name is derived from the Chumash word Shimiyi, which refers to the stringy, thread-like clouds that typify the region. The pronounce could have originated from the strands of mist from coastal fog that involve into the Oxnard Plain and wind their showing off up the Calleguas Creek and the Arroyo Las Posas into Simi Valley. The parentage of the herald was preserved because of the take effect of the anthropologist John P. Harrington, whose brother, Robert E. Harrington lived in Simi Valley. Robert Harrington superior explained the name: “The word Simiji in Indian meant the Tiny white wind clouds as a result often seen later than the wind blows happening here and Indians living upon the coast, would never venture going on here when those wind clouds were in the sky. The word Simiji was constructed by whites to the word Simi. There are extra explanations very nearly the make known Simi, but this one was unchangeable to me by my brother who worked higher than 40 years for the Smithsonian Institution and it seems most plausible to me”.

Three Chumash settlements existed in Simi Valley during the Mission get older in the late 18th and ahead of time 19th century: Shimiyi, Ta’apu (present-day Tapo Canyon), and Kimishax or Quimicas (Happy Camp Canyon west of Moorpark College). There are many Chumash cave paintings in the Place containing pictographs, including the Burro Flats Painted Cave in the Burro Flats area of the Simi Hills, located in the middle of the Simi Valley, West Hills, and Bell Canyon. The cave is located on private estate owned by NASA. Other areas containing Chumash Native American pictographs in the Simi Hills are by Lake Manor and Chatsworth.

The Rancho period

The first Europeans to visit Simi Valley were members of the Spanish Portolá expedition (1769–1770), the first European land way in and exploration of the present-day allow in of California. The expedition traversed the valley upon January 13–14, 1770, traveling from Conejo Valley to San Fernando Valley. They camped close a original village in the valley upon the 14th.

Rancho Simí, also known as Rancho San José de Nuestra Señora de Altagracia y Simí, was a 113,009-acre (457 km²) Spanish land agree in eastern Ventura and western Los Angeles counties approved in 1795 to Santiago Pico. After Santiago Pico’s death in 1815, the Rancho was regranted to Santiago’s sons Javier Pico and his two brothers, Patricio Pico and Miguel Pico, members of the prominent Pico relations of California. Rancho Simí was the antediluvian Spanish colonial land agree within Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. The pronounce derives from Shimiji, the read out of the Chumash Native American village here back the Spanish. It was the largest Spanish or Mexican estate grant truth in Ventura County, and one of the largest supreme in California. The Simi Adobe-Strathearn House, later the home of Robert P. Strathearn and family, served as the headquarters of the rancho.

José de la Guerra y Noriega, a Captain of the Santa Barbara Presidio, who had begun to acquire large amounts of estate in California to raise cattle, purchased Rancho Simí from the Pico relations in 1842. After Jose de la Guerra death in 1858, the sons of Jose de la Guerra continued to conduct yourself the ranchos. The decline of their riches came in the same way as several years of drought in the 1860s caused stifling losses. In 1865, the De la Guerras at a loose end the ownership of El Rancho Simí excluding the Rancho Tapo. El Rancho Tapo was ration of the native 113,009-acre Rancho Simí grant, but sometime almost 1820–1830, the Rancho Tapo came to be thought of as a remove place within Rancho Simí. The last of the De la Guerras to conscious in Simí Valley retreated to a 14,400-acre allocation of the original rancho that was known as the Tapo Rancho. As late as February 1877, Juan De la Guerra was reported in county newspapers to be preparing to plant walnuts in the Tapo, which appears to be the unadulterated mention of their farming concerning the original Simí grant.

The De la Guerra heirs tried all legal means, but by the 1880s, the Rancho Tapo as a consequence slipped from their ownership, as had the ablaze of the Rancho.

The Pioneer period

The Pioneer, or ‘American,’ period in Simi Valley began subsequently the 96,000-acre buy of El Rancho Simí by an eastern explorer named Thomas A. Scott (1814–1882), who had made his keep as an investor in the Pennsylvania Railroad during the Civil War. He was president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and a co-conspirator in Philadelphia and California Petroleum Company. Scouts came to California to purchase lands, and so Scott acquired El Rancho Simí (1865). His objective was to locate sites for oil, since the first oil with ease had been developed in Titusville, Pennsylvania just a few years earlier (1859). Within a short time, a 27-year-old man named Thomas Bard was sent west by Scott to govern the California properties. In the late 1880s, Simí Land and Water Company was formed to look to the selling of the big rancho in ranch-size properties. Some American farmers had begun to lease house in the greater Rancho Simí for farming.

The antiquated Anglo American ranchers showed taking place in Simí Valley in the late 1860s into the 1870s. Charles Emerson Hoar was utter the title of “first American farmer” by into the future Simí historian Janet Scott Cameron. He had purchased the Hummingbird’s Nest Ranch in the northeast corner of the Valley, and he leased house from the new owners of the Simí Rancho for raising sheep, already a proven quirk of making a living.

Much of the Simí Rancho land continued, as in Spanish days, to be used for raising sheep, cattle and grain. Wheat prospered longer here than in the on fire of the county because it was free of a sickness called “rust”. Barley soon became the really booming grain crop.

Agriculture and ranching dominated the landscape through the 1950s. Citrus, walnuts and apricots were whatever grown in Simi Valley. In the to the fore 1960s innovative residential encroachment began to accept place.

Modern residential development

When Simí was an agricultural community, there were ranch houses that dotted the Valley. Four certain communities moreover were located in the Valley (see ‘Four Communities of Simi Valley’ section below) prior to militant residential development. Though 1957 and 1958 brought the first ‘tract’ housing developments as soon as the Dennis and Ayhens, Wright Ranch and Valley Vista tracts were built, the tremendous ‘boom’ in residential press forward took place beginning in 1960. The population which was 4,073 in 1950 doubled to 8,110 in 1960. By 1970 the population in Simi is reported by the census as 59,832.

Four communities of Simi Valley prior to objector residential development

The pioneers arrived in the late 1860s – 1870s and ever since, this has been ‘The Valley of Simi.’ But, not everything the communities in the valley were known as ‘Simi.’ There was the township of Simi (known as ‘Simiopolis’ for about a six-month era in 1888, but next the proclaim reverted to Simi). In the valley there were as well as the communities of Santa Susana, Community Center and the Susana Knolls (known first as Mortimer Park) at every other points in time.

Simi – In the late 1887–1888, the concentration of Simi Land and Water Company came about. El Rancho Simí was estranged into ranches and farms by that corporation, and advertised for sale to midwestern and New England states. An swashbuckler group, the California Mutual Benefit Colony of Chicago, purchased estate and laid out a townsite (located amid First and Fifth Streets and from Los Angeles south to Ventura Ave), named it ‘Simiopolis’ and shipped twelve pre-cut, partially assembled houses from a lumberyard in Chicago via rail to Saticoy, then brought by wagon to Simi. These are known as ‘colony houses.’ This was the first ‘neighborhood’ in Simi. Stores sprung up on Los Angeles Ave, and the first Simi School was built in 1890 upon Third and California Streets, and was used until Simi Elementary was built in the mid-1920s.

Santa Susana – In 1903 the Santa Susana Train Depot was built, and the railroad was unmovable through Simi Valley, except for the tunnel, which was completed in 1904. A small business community grew up near the Santa Susana Train Depot, which was located on the north side of Los Angeles Ave, just east of Tapo Street. Over times residential developments followed and the town of Santa Susana was born. The Depot was moved in 1975 by Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District to its current location off of Kuehner.

Community Center – In 1922 L.F. Roussey laid out the little development which became known as Community Center. The driving force at the rear this improve was the dependence for a High School in Simi Valley, as well as an elementary scholastic in a more central location in the valley. The FIRST graduating class from the very first Simi High School was 1924, Simi Elementary was completed in 1926, The Methodist Church (which is now the Cultural Arts Center) was built in 1924. Numerous houses were built in Community Center in the 1920s and 1930s. The Simi Valley Woman’s Club was located there as well (the building which served as the clubhouse for the Woman’s Club was moved from the town of Simi). The Woman’s Club club house was used by many individuals and organizations as a community meeting place. It really was a ‘community center.’

Mortimer Park (the Susana knolls) – The area that is now the Knolls was a approximately 1,800-acre parcel of land that was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Lewis T. Mortimer in the in the future 1920s. They planned on selling the lots for cabins, or vacation homes. The lots, however, were very small (30 x 50 feet), and the Mortimers did not take the mountainous natural world of the estate into account, so quite often the lots were not buildable. Oftentimes several lots were needed to construct structures. In 1944 the Garden Club, an lively community direction in the area petitioned the county supervisors to tweak the post of Mortimer Park to the Susana Knolls.

The first attempt to incorporate the towns of Simi, the area known as Community Center (93065) and Santa Susana (93063) in 1966 was unsuccessful. The second try in 1969 was successful, with residents voting 6,454 to 3,685 supportive of incorporation. 59% of eligible voters turned out for this vote. Susana Knolls is an unincorporated area of the Valley. Voters along with voted whether to call this newly incorporated city ‘Santa Susana’ or ‘Simi Valley.’ The read out Simi Valley garnered 2,000 more votes than Santa Susana.

Other items of historical interest

Santa Susana Field Laboratory

The 2,848 acres (1,153 ha) Santa Susana Field Laboratory located in the Simi Hills, was used for the early payment of pioneering nuclear reactors and rocket engines beginning in 1948. The site was operated by Atomics International and Rocketdyne (originally both divisions of the North American Aviation company). The Rocketdyne isolation developed a variety of liquid rocket engines. Rocket engine tests were frequently heard in Simi Valley. The Atomics International distancing of North American Aviation designed, built and operated the Sodium Reactor Experiment, the first United States nuclear reactor to supply electricity to a public faculty system.[Also from Wikipedia: The Boiling Water Reactors (BORAX) experiments were five reactors built in the middle of 1953 and 1964 by Argonne National Laboratory. They proved that the boiling water concept was a feasible design for an electricity-producing nuclear reactor. One of the BORAX reactors (III) was afterward the first in the world to aptitude a city (Arco, Idaho) on July 17, 1955. Both claims can not be correct. ] The last nuclear reactor operated at SSFL in 1980 and the last rocket engine was produced in 2006. The SSFL has been closed to enhancement and testing. The site is undergoing psychoanalysis and removal of the nuclear services and cleanup of the soil and groundwater. The Boeing Company, the US DOE, and NASA are liable for the cleanup.

In July 1959, the Sodium Reactor Experiment suffered a immense incident similar to 13 of the reactor’s 43 fuel elements partially melted resulting in the controlled freedom of radioactive gas to the atmosphere. The reactor was repaired and returned to operation in September, 1960. The incident at the Sodium Reactor Experiment has been a source of controversy in the community. Technical analysis of the incident intended to maintain a lawsuit next to the current landowner (The Boeing Company) asserts the incident caused the much greater freedom of radioactivity than the crash at Three Mile Island. Boeing’s rarefied response concludes the monitoring conducted at the grow old of the incident, shows without help the allowable amount of radioactive gasses were released, and a Three Mile Island-scale pardon was not possible. The case was settled, it is reported, with a large payment by Boeing. In September 2009, The U.S. Department of Energy sponsored a public workshop where three nuclear reactor experts shared their independent analysis of the July, 1959 incident.

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory furthermore hosted the Energy Technology Engineering Center. The center performed the design, development and investigation of liquid metal reactor components for the United States Department of Energy from 1965 until 1998.

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory includes sites identified as historic by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and by the American Nuclear Society. The National Register of Historic Places listed Burro Flats Painted Cave is located within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, on a part of the site owned by the U.S. Government. The drawings within the cave have been termed “the best preserved Indian pictograph in Southern California”.

Rodney King trial

Four officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, and Theodore Briseno) were accused of using unnecessary force in a March 3, 1991 beating of an African-American motorist Rodney Glen King. The case known as the Rodney King Trials was based on footage recorded on house video by a bystander (George Holliday). The now-infamous video was present nationally and globally and caused tremendous response because the beating was believed to be racially motivated. Due to the close media coverage of the arrest, Judge Stanley Weisberg of the California Court of Appeals ascribed a bend of venue to adjacent to Ventura County, using an user-friendly courtroom in Simi Valley for the acknowledge case neighboring the officers.

On April 29, 1992, a Ventura County board of judges acquitted three of the four officers (Koon, Wind, and Briseno) and did not attain a verdict upon one (Powell). Many believed that the brusque outcome was a consequences of the racial and social make-up of the jury, which included ten white people, one Filipino person, and one Hispanic woman. None were Simi Valley residents. Among the board of adjudicators were three who had been security guards or in military service. The acquittal led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots and increase protest a propos the country.