Owensmouth (Pacific Electric)

The Pacific Electric streetcar service to Owensmouth (present day Canoga Park) was part of an extraordinary real estate development in Southern California. Nearly the entire southern San Fernando Valley was bought in 1910 by the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Co., owned by a syndicate of rich Los Angeles investors, developers, and speculators: including Harrison Gray Otis, Harry Chandler, Moses Sherman, Hobart Johnstone Whitley, and others. It anticipated possible connections to but was planned independent of the soon to be completed (1913) Los Angeles Aqueduct from the Owens River watershed to the City of Los Angeles through the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County.

To help promote sales of the land, General Moses Sherman's Los Angeles Pacific Railroad set off to build a streetcar line across the San Fernando Valley, to serve the three plotted new towns: Van Nuys (1911); Marion (now Reseda); and Owensmouth (now Canoga Park) (1912). At the time, it could have seemed like a streetcar to open agricultural fields at the end of the line — but was a necessity to promote development. Alongside it across the Valley westward from Van Nuys was Sherman Way, the "$500,000 paved boulevard" with lush landscaping and no speed limit where one might get up to 35 mph, a separate dirt road for farm wagons/equipment, and telegraph lines. Los Angeles Pacific Railroad later sold the line to the Pacific Electric.

Owensmouth was named in classic real estate "boosterism", as 'nearest' the outlet-'mouth' of the Owens River Aqueduct and echoing English and New England town names such as Falmouth, Yarmouth, and Plymouth. It was actually 20 miles away when founded in 1912 and used well water instead until being annexed to L.A. city in 1917. The controversy of Valley land speculation and the aqueduct brought the community to change its name from Owensmouth to Canoga Park in 1931, after the Southern Pacific "Canoga" station there. The name of the Pacific Electric line was unchanged as Owensmouth until its demise in December 1941. Though the line had far higher annual ridership than any rapid transit line in the region today, most of that was within urban Los Angeles, and the community of Owensmouth-Canoga Park was relatively undeveloped until the line's later years.

The line through the Valley came over Cahuenga Pass, up Vineland Avenue through North Hollywood, turning onto Chandler Boulevard, proceeding west to the curve onto Van Nuys Boulevard, through Van Nuys to a curve (Sherman Circle) off of Van Nuys Blvd. turning west onto Sherman Way to Owensmouth. On Shoup Avenue, named after Pacific Electric president Paul Shoup, the center was used as its end of the line sidings.

In the 1990s a new cross-Valley rapid transit line was built, the Metro Orange Line, a dedicated bus transit-way which uses part of the old Pacific Electric right-of-way (Chandler Blvd. east of Ethel Ave.) and the former Southern Pacific south and west Valley route (from White Oak Avenue to the Chatsworth station).