Almost Lost Los Angeles: Pictures of Woodland Hills, California, 1948-1954

My friend rescued a number of old family photograph albums at a large yard sale a few weeks ago. She loaned them to me so I could peruse them and try to connect them to local history.  Fortunately, along with the albums there were Baby Books that included the family's name and address.

I haven't been able to find any direct descendants of the people in the photos, which date from 1948 to the mid-1950s. So I thought we could adopt them for awhile, and share in their story.

This is the Johnson family, from Woodland Hills (suburb of Los Angeles), California.

Lennart.

And Betty Jean (with little Lennart, Jr.
 about to make his first appearance).

The couple had apparently met during or just after Lennart served in the Navy during World War II.  Based on my perusal of the older family albums, he was originally from a small farming community in South Dakota, and she had graduated from Verdugo High School in Tujunga, California. The Johnsons were one of thousands of families who settled in the San Fernando Valley after the war.

Inside a file folder, along with the photo albums, was a map of the San Fernando Valley Country Club Golf Course, with surrounding home lots.

In 1948, they bought a piece of land
on San Miguel Street, just east of Canoga Avenue. 
The lot appears on the far right edge 
of the golf course map, but the street name does not.

They broke ground for their new home.
Lennart used the shovel first....

Then Betty Jean took a turn.

It looks like they were able to participate
in the construction of the house.

  

But before they could finish, Lenny (Lennart, Jr.) was born.

Once the new house's walls were plastered, Betty Jean painted them.

They needed to do something with the front yard, too.

The little house was finished and the family moved in.  Within a couple of years, the plants in the front yard had grown.

In 1948, there were only a handful of other houses on San Miguel Street and Providencia, one street to the south, so we see a lot of vacant land in the earliest photos. As Lenny grew older, we see other houses being built and fences marking their backyards.

On January 11-12 1949, something happened that seems almost surreal in 2019: Woodland Hills got several inches of snow!  Betty Jean wrote the dates down on the backs of the pictures, and noted that the snow measured four inches. 

The family built a snowman and took lots of pictures.

Lenny checked out the snow.

And decided it was fun.

As the next few years went by, Lennart and Betty Jean took many pictures of their neighborhood and other parts of the Valley.

This is Chalk Hill, along Ventura Boulevard, looking east from a bit past De Soto Avenue, in 1951.

This is looking east on Ventura Boulevard
just past Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
(I think this is where Franklin's Hardware
is currently located.)

This is C. L. Snyder's Five and Dime,
21914 1/2 Ventura Blvd.

This is looking west on Dumetz Avenue
from Alhama Blvd., 1951

The Johnsons drove up to Topanga Summit.

  
Lenny used the Kiddie Scope to look at the San Fernando Valley.

It was big and not nearly as full of buildings and asphalt and concrete as it is today (understatement).

The Johnson family drove out to Bakersfield in March 1950 to see the wildflowers.

They took a picture of  their car at the corner of Vanowen and Tampa, in November 1950.

Back at home, the neighbor kids came over to play in the backyard: Jean, Bobby, and Lenny, blowing bubbles, November 1950.  

Christmas was an important holiday in the early 1950s.  Betty Jean wrote on the backs of some of the dozens of photos she saved.

Nativity scene, Ventura Blvd., 1951.

December 1953 is written on the back of this picture.
(No location given.)

"Waiting to see Santa, 1953."

Lenny must have been a good boy, because he got lots of great presents for Christmas every year.  In 1951, the family got a television set.

Lenny got a tricycle....

And a Marx gas station.

By Christmas 1953, Lenny had decided to become a cowboy, when he wasn't driving heavy equipment.

And by 1954, little brother Carl had joined the Johnson family.

There are so many, many more pictures of the Johnsons and their extended family and neighbors. Visiting grandma's house nearby. Neighbor kids coming over to swim in Lenny's inflatable pool, while the grownups picnicked in the backyard.  Driving vacations at national parks -- Lassen, Yosemite, Crater Lake.  Taking the ferry to Santa Catalina Island. Driving through Las Vegas. Visiting the family farm back in the upper midwest.

If my friend had not rescued these photograph albums at the yard sale, we might never have known the Johnsons. And we would have missed their memories of Southern California before it became so...different.

___

Here's some information on the history of snow in Los Angeles:

https://www.kwlarchmont.com/2018/12/10/it-used-to-snow-in-los-angeles-with-some-regularity-that-ended-in-1962-here-s-why/