Owensmouth Line

The Pacific Electric streetcar service to Owensmouth (present-day Canoga Park) was part of a real-estate development in Southern California.[2] Nearly the entire southern San Fernando Valley was bought in 1910 by the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Co., owned by a syndicate of wealthy Los Angeles investors, developers, and speculators: including Harrison Gray Otis, Harry Chandler, Moses Sherman, Hobart Johnstone Whitley, and others.[3] 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.

Cahuenga Pass in 1922 prior to freeway construction

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).[3] At the time, streetcar lines were seen as 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 miles per hour (56 km/h), a separate dirt road for farm wagons/equipment, and telegraph lines.[3] Los Angeles Pacific Railroad later sold the line to the Pacific Electric. The line opened to Van Nuys on December 16, 1911, extending to Owensmouth on December 7 the following year.[4]

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.[3] It was actually 20 miles (32 km) away when founded in 1912 and used well water instead until being annexed to the city of Los Angeles in 1917.[3] 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.[3] The name of the Pacific Electric line was unchanged as Owensmouth until the demise of through service.

The route originally navigated the Cahuenga Pass in its own right-of-way on the west side of the state highway. When the Hollywood Freeway was built, the line was relocated to the freeway's median strip.[5]

Postcard depicting the private right of way in the Hollywood Freeway median strip (right of center frame), c. 1940

Services were truncated to North Sherman Way on June 1, 1938, and finally replaced by buses on December 28, 1952.[1][4] Unlike other lines which saw a decrease in service after World War II, ridership greatly increased in the service's final years.[4]

A survey conducted by Caltrans in 1981 reported that almost all of the line had either been removed or paved over for street use.[5]

Leaving Downtown on the same tracks as the Hollywood Line, the line continues along the Sherman Line at Sunset Junction before turning north at Highland. The line continued on its own private right of way though the Cahuenga Pass, turning up Vineland Avenue through North Hollywood, and onto Chandler Boulevard. Proceeding west to the curve onto Van Nuys Boulevard, it ran through Van Nuys to a curve (Sherman Circle) off of Van Nuys Boulevard turning west onto Sherman Way to Owensmouth.[6] On Shoup Avenue, named after Pacific Electric president Paul Shoup,[3] the center was used as its end of the line sidings.

• Picover station
• East San Fernando Valley Light Rail Transit Project

• Map of the Pacific Electric Railway Routes in the San Fernando Valley (1919) — via Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc.