"Los Angeles is surrounded by valleys, but there's only one Valley..."
Hush Money, by Peter Israel
Why an aviation page?
Airplanes and the people who created and flew them, from Howard Hughes and Kelly Johnson to Amelia Earhart and Pancho Barnes, played formative roles in the Valley's story. These are some snippets of that important past. More will be added as time allows, so check back often. Also, see these other sources of information below.
Grand Central Air Terminal story
San Fernando Valley 99s chapter history
Do you have other sources to share with America's Suburb readers? Please let us know by email.
Van Nuys Airport, the movie
Brian J. Terwilliger has shot a short film about Van Nuys Airport and its history. It's due to be finished in fall 2004 and made available on DVD. In the meantime, he has put together a great website, OneSixRight.com (named for the main runway), that has a good dozen historic photos of the airfield and surrounding area.
Another rich source of historic details on the airport (which opened in 1928 as Metropolitan Airport, with intersecting grass runways) are the websites put up by Mark A. Reynosa. He offers maps and photos of the World War II era, the old Air National Guard base on Balboa Boulevard and the Lockheed era. Another site with history and links is here.
Waldo Waterman
Aviation pioneer Waldo Waterman was a pilot and innovator of some repute in California in the 1920s. In 1928, he came to the Valley as the first manager of Metropolitan Field, a 394-acre, sod-runway airport opened on bean fields at Woodley Avenue and Saticoy Street.
In those days, two grass runways intersected. A single hangar that faced on the original east-west flight line still remains at 16217 Lindbergh Street, on the east side of today's Van Nuys Airport. Waterman Drive is said to follow part of the old runway.
Backed by Hollywood figures and Tarzana founder Edgar Rice Burroughs, Waterman opened Metropolitan on Dec. 17, 1928 with a big party. The Owensmouth High School (now Canoga Park High) band played. "Everyone was there," Western Flying magazine said. A year later, Waterman set the American altitude record of 20,820 feet.
Plane Crashes
Airplanes and the pilots who flew them are a big part of Valley lore. Amelia Earhart, the aviation pioneer who disappeared in 1937, made her home on Valley Spring Lane in Toluca Lake and her base at United Field, the original name of Burbank Airport.
Earhart and flyers such as Pancho Barnes, Waldo Waterman and the future tycoon Howard Hughes set aviation records flying in the Valley. Sometimes, crashes provided bigger news.
Possibly the first fatal crash occured in front of hundreds of witnesses at the formal dedication of the studios at Universal City on March 15, 1915. Universal threw a big party that included a trainload of celebrities from New York. The party ended abruptly when stunt pilot Frank Stite plunged into a ravine while trying to reenact a movie manuever.
During the filming of Hell's Angels, which marked Hughes' Hollywood debut, crashes in the Valley claimed two lives. Stunt flier Al Johnson hit power lines in Glendale and fell into the Los Angeles River bed.
The more spectacular crash occured during filming of a scene depicting the shooting down of a German bomber during World War I. Pilot Al Wilson put the large plane into a dive, but the fuselage fabric began to shred. Wilson parachuted to safety but Phil Jones, a crewman lying in the plane to release smoke for the cameras, was aboard when the plane slammed into an orchard at Terra Bella Street and Haddon Avenue in Pacoima.
Pacoima also was the scene of a ghastly mid-air crash that rained flaming debris on the boys athletic field of Pacoima Junior High. Three boys died in the January 31, 1957 tragedy.
The crash occured at 25,000 feet between an F-89 fighter jet and a new DC-7 airliner undergoing a final test flight. Six crew members perished, including the DC-7 pilot, Archie Twitchell, who had time to radio these final words: "Uncontrollable..uncontrollable...say good-bye to everybody." Seventy-four people on the ground were hurt.
The terror of that morning was depicted in La Bamba, since Ritchie Valens attended the school at the time and lost a friend. Outrage over the deaths led to construction of a hospital in Pacoima and a ban on military operations over the Valley.
The Cult of Box Canyon
The deadliest air crash in the Valley's history gave many people their first look at an unusual cult that lived in Box Canyon, near Chatsworth.
The Standard Airlines C-46 was circling on approach to Burbank after a flight from New York when it crashed in Santa Susana Pass on July 12, 1949. Thirty-five people died at the scene near today's Mesa Drive and Lilac Lane. Fourteen others survived, including an actress who was Judy Garland's stand-in in The Wizard of Oz.
Among the volunteer rescuers were curious-looking men dressed in cotton robes and sandals with long, stringy hair. They were followers of Khrishna Venta, known to the law as Francis Pencovic. Some 53 men, women and children lived in his Box Canyon compound, preaching world peace, universal love and the pursuit of knowledge. "I may as well say it, I am Christ,'' he once informed his flock.
Venta, who declared that humans came to Earth in spaceships, had run-ins with authorities over bad checks and nonpayment of child support. His final dispute involved two ex-members who suspected he was having sex with their wives.
On December 10, 1958, an explosion rumbled across the Valley from the direction of Box Canyon. The ex-devotees had detonated 20 sticks of dynamite, killing themselves, Venta and six others.
Glendale's Ill-fated Blimp
For a time, Thomas Benton Slate seemed poised to make Glendale the airship capital of the West. In 1926, he began to build his pride and joy, the City of Glendale dirigible, at Grand Central Airport.
Slate invited fathers to bring their kids and watch him assemble the innvoative design: corrugated sheet metal riveted together into a rigid skin. Tens of thousands came to take a look.
A crowd of hundreds gathered Dec. 19, 1929 for the first test flight. The ship floated out of the hangar to oohs and ahs, then everything went wrong. Under the heat of the sun, the skin began to bulge and rivets popped, sounding like gunfire. When the ship began to list toward the ground, spectators took off running, fearing a fireball.
Instead, the City of Glendale fell to the ground with a clank. A relief valve was the culprit, but the ship's poor design -- virtually the entire skin would have to be disassembled to fix the damage -- made any repairs too expensive. The dirigible era at Glendale was over.
