Security Guard in Northridge, CA

The area now called Northridge was first inhabited about 2,000 years ago by the Native American Gabrielino (or Tongva) people. Among their tribal villages Totonga was nearby Northridge. The Gabrielino-Tongva people, who lived in dome-shaped houses, are sometimes referred to as the “people of the earth”. They spoke a Takic Uto-Aztecan (Shoshonean) language. Their pictographs are very hard to find nowadays, and those not public, nor protected, many destroyed by the development of Greater Los Angeles; there are no public rock art sites in Los Angeles County. A replica can be seen at The Southwest Museum and there are archeological exhibits at Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Rancho Los Alamitos, Louis Robidoux Nature Center and El Dorado Nature Center.

In the late 1840s, Mexican Governor Pio Pico broke with the tradition of “granting” land and, instead, sold it, without the usual area limitations, to Eulogio de Celis, a native of Spain. By 1850, de Celis was in the Los Angeles census as an agriculturist, 42 years old, and the owner of real estate worth $20,000.

A few years later, the land was split up. The heirs of Eulogio de Celis sold the northernly half – 56,000 acres (230 km²) – to Senator George K. Porter, who had called it the “Valley of the Cumberland” and Senator Charles Maclay, who exclaimed: “This is the Garden of Eden.” Porter was interested in ranching; Maclay in subdivision and colonization. Francis Marion (“Bud”) Wright, an Iowa farm boy who migrated to California as a young man, became a ranch hand for Senator Porter and later co-developer of the 1,100-acre (4.5 km²) Hawk Ranch, which is now Northridge land.