Consider what the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley and Mission San Fernando in particular looked like in 1873. I somehow never knew until this morning that the remains of Bob Hope, his wife Dolores and other Hopes are buried in a Mission-adjacent garden.
What the San Fernando Valley needed back then was water, but it took a visionary sociopath like Noah Cross** to make it all happen.
** Kidding — I meant to say William Mulholland.