Valley Timeline Unveiled: How Pacoima Helped shape the San Fernando Valley's History

In 2024, the Pacoima Historical Society joined forces with The Museum of the San Fernando Valley to build something the Valley had never embarked on before: a public, evolving Historical Timeline that tells the region’s story from deep time to the 21st century, with community voices at its core. Anchored on the Museum grounds in Northridge and supported by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the project is both an outdoor exhibition and a living narrative that will continue to grow along with the Valley itself.

The first phase of the San Fernando Valley Historical Timeline was unveiled on June 13, 2024 introducing visitors to a sweep of history that spans millions of years and extends through the end of the 19th century. Installed as large interpretive panels, Phase one traces the Valley’s geologic formation, the presence of Indigenous communities collectively known as Fernandeños, the establishment and impact of Mission San Fernando Rey de España, and the transition from Spanish and Mexican periods into early American statehood. The Pacoima Historical Society helped ensure that early Tataviam/Fernandeño stories, mission-era labor, land grants, and the emergence of “the first city of the Valley” at San Fernando were not footnotes but central elements of the narrative.

Phase one orients visitors to key historic sites that still stand today, effectively turning the timeline into a guide to the Valley’s physical memory. Mission San Fernando Rey de España and its Convento, the Andrés Pico and Rómulo Pico Adobes, Leonis Adobe, Campo de Cahuenga, and other Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments are referenced as touchstones that connect the panel text to the buildings, landscapes, and archaeological traces that shaped early life in the Valley. By 1899, the panels show a region in transition with railroads crossing the Valley floor, ranch lands subdividing, and small towns like San Fernando positioning themselves as gateways to a rapidly changing Los Angeles.

Phase II: 1900–1949, Untold Stories

On May 18, 2025, Phase II of the timeline was unveiled during the Museum’s 4th Annual Pan-Asian/Pacific Arts & Cultural Festival, marking a major expansion of the story into the first half of the 20th century. This phase, completed in partnership with the Pacoima Historical Society, deliberately centers “untold stories” and underrepresented communities, weaving in narratives of labor, migration, war, discrimination, and creativity from 1900 through 1949.

The new panels highlight episodes such as the rise of railroad and agricultural towns, the Valley’s role in early aviation and industry, the building of the Southern Pacific lines and tunnels, and the impact of World War II on housing, jobs, and returning veterans. They also call out cultural flashpoints, organizing by workers and communities, the growth of Mexican and other immigrant neighborhoods, Japanese American experiences around wartime incarceration, and early civil rights struggles that shaped the Valley’s identity long before freeways and tract homes remade the landscape. In keeping with the project’s emphasis on visibility, the panels reference significant cultural and historical markers beyond the Museum grounds, such as the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural in the Tujunga Wash, which offers a parallel visual chronicle of California and Valley history from an explicitly multiethnic perspective.

A Recognized Historical Marker

The San Fernando Valley Historical Timeline itself was formally recognized as a historical marker, underscoring its role as more than just an exhibit. The marker credits the Museum of the San Fernando Valley and the Pacoima Historical Society as collaborators. It identifies the installation as a permanent record of the Valley’s layered past, situated in a neighborhood long lacking a comprehensive public history. This designation places the timeline alongside other notable regional markers and monuments, helping institutionalize community-driven storytelling within the broader framework of Southern California public history.

The rollout of the timeline has been accompanied by active media and digital outreach that expands its reach beyond the Museum’s walls. Social media posts from both the Museum and the Pacoima Historical Society introduce the project as a DCA-sponsored San Fernando Valley Historical Timeline, emphasize the inclusion of “local legends and untold stories,” and invite the public to view each new phase as it is installed. A 2024 online preview event, hosted via Zoom and promoted through the Museum’s blog, allowed history enthusiasts to see Phase I content and discuss the research process before the physical panels went up.

The project also connects to a deeper digital ecosystem of Valley history, including the LA History Archive’s earlier San Fernando Valley timeline and CSUN’s San Fernando Valley History Digital Library, which supplies many of the archival photographs, documents, and reference points that undergird the new panels. The concept of the timeline was first presented by Pacoima Historical Society’s President, Crystal Jackson. In public communications, the Society framed its role as one of inserting Pacoima and other historically marginalized communities into broader Valley narratives, complementing its own work in preserving rare photos, films, and oral histories of the northeast Valley.

Phase III: 1950–2010

The final set of panels—Phase III—is slated for installation in June 2026, carrying the story from 1950 through 2010 and capturing the era most residents remember from lived experience, film, and popular culture. This phase will follow the Valley through postwar suburbanization, the construction of the freeway system, the aerospace and entertainment booms, school integration battles, environmental struggles, and the demographic transformation that made Latinos the largest population group by the early 21st century. Media references expected or already identified for this segment include touchstones like the Northridge earthquake, the Rodney King beating on Foothill Boulevard and subsequent trial in nearby Simi Valley, secession movements, and pop-cultural moments such as the 1982 song “Valley Girl” and the Great Wall of Los Angeles’ continued evolution.

By the time the 1950–2010 panels join Phases I and II, the San Fernando Valley Historical Timeline will offer visitors a nearly wall-to-wall, 360-degree view of the region’s evolution—from Indigenous homelands to mission frontier, from railroad hub to suburban symbol, from stereotyped “Valley” backdrop to one of the most diverse urban regions in the United States. Across all phases, the collaboration between the Museum of the San Fernando Valley and the Pacoima Historical Society ensures that the narrative is not only chronological but inclusive, foregrounding communities, events, and cultural expressions that earlier histories often left in the margins.

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