Sylmar is a suburban neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley and is the northernmost neighborhood within the City of Los Angeles. Historically known for its profusion of sylvan olive orchards, Sylmar can trace its past to the 18th century and the founding of the San Fernando Mission. In 1890, olive production was begun systematically. The Sylmar climate was also considered healthy, and so a sanitarium was established, the first in a series of hospitals in the neighborhood. There are fourteen public and eight private schools within Sylmar.
History
Naming
San Fernando became a city in 1874, leading to the naming of the unincorporated land surrounding San Fernando as Morningside. In 1893 the area was named Sylmar, a fusion of two Latin words for "forest" and "sea" in reference to the large number of olive trees that once covered the area.
Around 2000, some residents proposed a plan to rename the northwest portion of the district as Rancho Cascades. The name change was approved in 2018.
Sylmar has been nicknamed "The Top of Los Angeles," owed to the fact that Sylmar is the northernmost neighborhood in Los Angeles.
Olives
The foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains at the north edge of the San Fernando Valley was perceived as "an unattractive and apparently worthless waste" before 2,000 acres (810 ha) were transformed in the late 1890s by the Los Angeles Olive Growers Association. One observer recalled that the land had been "a mass of ill-looking chapparel [sic] and chemisal"[sic] before it was planted with olives.
In 1893, a group of Illinois businessmen purchased from the trustees of the Maclay ranch either 1,000 or 2,000 acres (405 or 810 ha) — the sources differ — east of the railroad tracks on San Fernando Road just south of Roxford Street and in 1894 began planting olives trees on up to 1,700 acres (690 ha). Experts were brought from France to supervise the work. Calling themselves the Los Angeles Olive Growers Association (in 1898 C.O. (Paul) Milltimore was the president and George L. Arnold the secretary), they built a packing plant and sold olives under the Tyler Olives label, later changing to the Sylmar Packing label. Sylmar's olives became noted throughout the state for sweetness and purity. Chinese pickers were hired to harvest the crops, and up to 800 U.S. gallons (3,000 L) of olive oil a day were produced. The pickling plant was located on the corner of Roxford Street and San Fernando Road. By March 1898 about 200,000 trees had been planted, and by 1906 the property had become the largest olive grove in the world.
One source stated in 1981 that it was the "Fusano family" who built a headquarters building for the olive association on Roxford and San Fernando in 1902 and that the first packing plant was built in 1909. The first groves were planted with Mission, Nevadillo Blanco and Manzanillo olives. Some Sevillano and Ascolano varieties were planted for extra-large fruit.
During the picking season in the early 1900s, an extra force of 300 Japanese was employed and housed in a village of tents. In 1927 the packing plant, which had been built in 1910, employed some five hundred workers during its busiest season, November through January. The oil was pressed from the fruit, allowed to separate from the fruit's water content, then drawn into 12,000-gallon concrete tanks lined with glass and set deep into the ground to avoid a temperature change. Over time, the plant expanded its activities, bringing in figs, pimientos and watermelon rind from the San Joaquin Valley for processing.
In 1904 the Sylmar brand olive oil won first place at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri; in 1906 at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, Portland, Oregon; and in 1915 at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
In 1922, the controlling interest in the Los Angeles Olive Growers' Association, which had been held by the estate of F.D. Butterfield (Charlotte M. Butterfield, the heir), was bought by Charles C. Moore of San Francisco, and its name was changed to Sylmar Packing Corporation. The management remained with Frank Simonds, who was president of the association. At that time there were 140,000 trees on the property.
Some of the olive trees were still growing in Sylmar decades after they were planted. In 1963, twenty-five mature olive trees were removed from the site of the Sylmar Juvenile Hall, then under construction (below), to be planted at Busch Gardens, an entertainment center in Van Nuys.