1.
Simi Hills
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The Simi Hills are a low rocky mountain range of the Transverse Ranges in eastern Ventura County and western Los Angeles County, of southern California, United States. The Simi Hills are aligned east-west and run for 26 miles, the Simi Hills are part of the central Transverse Ranges System. They lie almost entirely within southeastern Ventura County, with southern and eastern foothills within western Los Angeles County. The Simi Hills are on the edge of the San Fernando Valley. The Simi Valley lies to the north, and the Conejo Valley lies to the southwest, the San Fernando Valley communities of Chatsworth, West Hills, and Woodland Hills are in the eastern hills and adjacent valley floor in Los Angeles city and county. The cities of Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, and Simi Valley city are in the hills, the two nearby mountain ranges are, the higher Santa Susana Mountains adjacent on the northeast across Santa Susana Pass, and the Santa Monica Mountains running nearby along the south. The Simis undeveloped native habitat provides routes that protect larger land wildlife of the Santa Monicas from genetic isolation, large sections of the Simi Hills are protected by parks and open space preserves. The Santa Susana Field Laboratory property, a wildlife corridor to the Santa Susanas, has been proposed for public open space parkland after the closed sites cleanup completion. The hills provide the complete or partial watersheds for several year-round creeks, Bell Creek and Arroyo Calabasas are the headwaters of the Los Angeles River, by name its beginning with their confluence in nearby Canoga Park. 90% of the Santa Susana Field Lab property drains into the Los Angeles River via tributaries, because of its low elevation, the Simi Hills typically experience rainy, mild winters. Snow is rare in the Simi Hills, even in the highest areas, summers are warm and dry and wildfires do occur here. The Simi Hills further block these winds, which bring cool weather in summer and winter from the San Fernando Valley. Peaks in this region include Simi Peak,2,403 ft, Chatsworth Peak,2,314 ft, the southern lower hills are mostly covered in grasslands and oak savanna. The northern rocky hills area is primarily chaparral shrubland and oak woodlands, the Simi Hills are part of the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion. The oaks include, the evergreen live oak, the deciduous valley oak. Riparian zone plants include California sycamores and arroyo willows, spring wildflowers include the redbush monkey flower, Plummers mariposa lily, and canyon sunflower. Poison oak is also an important member of the plant habitat community here. The Simi Hills were inhabited for over 8,000 years by Paleo-indians and Chumash-Venturaño Native Americans for settlements, the Chumash had the established village of Huwam in Cañon del Escorpión
2.
Conejo Valley
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The Conejo Valley is a region spanning both southeastern Ventura County and northwestern Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States. The first human residents of Conejo valley were the native Chumash people, local villagers first contact with Europeans came in 1770. The Spanish exploratory party led by Gaspar de Portolá, returning from its journey up the coast as far as present-day San Francisco, entered the valley from the northwest. On the outward journey, the explorers had traveled up the Los Angeles River, ascended the Grapevine to Castaic Junction. On the return trip, they sought a route to the San Fernando Valley. Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi kept a diary of the expedition, Crespi gave the name El triunfo del Dulcísimo Nombre de Jesús to a camping place by a creek – todays Triunfo Canyon Road begins between Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village. Later, explorer Juan Bautista de Anza used Portolás shortcut on his way north in 1774, on de Anzas second expedition, diarist Father Pedro Font referred to many watering places, like those of El Triunfo and Los Conejos. In 1803, the Spanish land grant in the area was given the name Rancho El Conejo, in Spanish, conejo means rabbit, and refers to the rabbits common to the region, specifically the desert cottontail and brush rabbit species. It is located in the part of the Greater Los Angeles Area. The valley is located in the Santa Monica Mountains on an elevated area, many high-tech companies, particularly those in biotechnology, including Amgen, Baxter, General Dynamics Corporation, and Rockwell International are prevalent in the area. It also includes many other corporations, especially dot com companies. It also is home to many healthcare and other companies like WellPoint, J. D. Power and Associates, Volkswagen, Audi, THQ, SAGE Publications, MacTech. Although the region is white with a large Hispanic minority, there is a small. Harold and Edwin Janss purchased ten acres of land of what is now central Thousand Oaks from the heir of John Edwards. A ranch, named the Janss Conejo Ranch, was utilized as a farm and to raise thoroughbred horses with the Santa Susanna Mountains, television Westerns such as The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza were filmed in Janss Conejo between the 1950s and 1960s. It was also used as the locations for Disneys Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier and Westward Ho. In 2013 the Conejo Valley Tourism Improvement District was formed by the cities of Thousand Oaks, CVTID is a non-profit corporation that markets Conejo Valley as a Tourist Destination. Conejo Valleys two largest tourist attractions are the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
3.
Ventura County, California
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Ventura County is a county in the southern part of the U. S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 823,318, Ventura County comprises the Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA Combined Statistical Area. It is also considered the southernmost county along the California Central Coast, Ventura County was historically inhabited by the Chumash people, who also settled much of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, with their presence dating back 10, 000-12,000 years. The Chumash were hunter-gatherers, fishermen, and also traders with the Mojave, Yokuts, the Chumash are also known for their rock paintings and for their great basketry. Chumash Indian Museum in Thousand Oaks has several reconstructed Chumash houses and there are several Chumash pictographs in the county, the plank canoe, called a tomol in Chumash, was important to their way of life. Canoe launching points on the mainland for trade with the Chumash of the Channel Islands were located at the mouth of the Ventura River, Mugu Lagoon and this has led to speculations among archeologists of whether the Chumash could have had a pre-historic contact with Polynesians. According to diachronic linguistics, certain words such as tomolo’o could be related to Polynesian languages, the dialect of the Chumash language that was spoken in Ventura County was Ventureño. Others include Point Mugu from the word Muwu, Saticoy from the word Sa’aqtiko’y, in October 1542, the expedition led by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo anchored in an inlet near Point Mugu, its members were the first Europeans to arrive in the area that would become Ventura County. Active occupation of California by Spain began in 1769, gaspar de Portolà led a military expedition by land from San Diego to Monterey, passing through Ventura County in August of that year. A priest with the expedition, Father Juan Crespí, kept a journal of the trip and noted that the area was ideal for a mission to be established, also on this expedition was Father Junípero Serra, who later founded a mission on this site. On March 31,1782, the Mission San Buenaventura was founded by Father Serra and it is named after Saint Bonaventure, one of the early intellectual founders of the Franciscan Order. The town that grew up around the mission, was originally and remains named San Buenaventura, in the 1790s, the Spanish Governor of California began granting land concessions to Spanish Californians who were often retiring soldiers. These concessions were known as ranchos and consisted of thousands of acres of land that were used primarily as ranch land for livestock, in Ventura County, Rancho Simi was granted in 1795 and Rancho El Conejo in 1802. Fernando Tico was granted Ojai and part of Ventura by Gov. Alvarado, California land that had been vested in the King of Spain was now owned by the nation of Mexico. By the 1830s, Mission San Buenaventura was in a decline with fewer neophytes joining the mission, the number of cattle owned by the mission dropped from first to fifteenth ranking in the California Missions. The missions were secularized by the Mexican government in 1834, the Mexican governors began granting land rights to Mexican Californians, often retiring soldiers. By 1846, there were 19 rancho grants in Ventura County, in 1836, Mission San Buenaventura was transferred from the Church to a secular administrator. The natives who had been working at the mission left to work on the ranchos
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
6.
Thousand Oaks, California
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Thousand Oaks is a city in southeastern Ventura County, California, United States. It is in the part of the Greater Los Angeles Area. It was named after the oak trees that grow in the area. The city forms the core of the Conejo Valley, which includes Thousand Oaks proper, Newbury Park, Westlake Village, Agoura Hills. The Los Angeles County–Ventura County line crosses at the eastern border with Westlake Village. The population was estimated to be 129,339 in 2015, Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park were part of a master-planned city, created by the Janss Investment Company in the mid-1950s. It included about 1,000 custom home lots,2,000 single-family residences, a shopping center. The median home price is around $669,500, Thousand Oaks was ranked the fourth-safest among cities with a population greater than 100,000 in the United States by the FBIs 2013 Uniform Crime Reports. The area was occupied by the Chumash people, and 2000-year-old cave drawings may still be seen at the Chumash Indian Museum,3290 Lang Ranch Parkway. The Chumash village was known as Sapwi, which means House of the Deer, the areas recorded history dates to 1542 when Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo landed at Point Mugu and claimed the land for Spain. It eventually became part of the 48,671 acres Rancho El Conejo land grant by the Spanish government and it served as grazing land for vaqueros for the next fifty years. In the late 19th century it was on the route between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. The Stagecoach Inn was built in 1876, and is now a California Historical Landmark, the Janss family, developers of Southern California subdivisions, purchased 10,000 acres in the early 20th century. They eventually created plans for a community and the name remains prominently featured in the city. Jungleland USA was one of Southern Californias first theme parks, wild animal shows entertained thousands in the 1940s and 1950s. Many television and movie productions used the parks trained animals and were filmed there, including Birth of a Nation, Tarzan, jungleland closed in May 1968, in part due to competition from other amusement parks such as Knotts Berry Farm and Disneyland. The Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Center today stands on the site of the park, the City of Thousand Oaks was incorporated on October 7,1964, the first incorporated city in the Conejo Valley. Some sources mistakenly state that Thousand Oaks was incorporated on September 29,1964 and it is known for being a planned community, as the city is one of few that have actually stayed with the master plan
7.
Newbury Park, California
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Newbury Park is a town located mostly within the western Thousand Oaks city limits in Ventura County, California, United States. The unincorporated county island of Casa Conejo is part of Newbury Park, lying within the Conejo Valley in the northwestern part of the Greater Los Angeles Area, Newbury Park abuts the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The community is located approximately 35 miles from Downtown Los Angeles and is less than 7 mi from the Los Angeles County border in Westlake Village. The closest coastal city is Malibu,22 mi from Newbury Park, the ZIP code is 91320, and the community is inside area code 805. About 28,000 of Thousand Oaks 110,000 residents reside in Newbury Park, Newbury Park, along with Thousand Oaks proper, have numerous times ranked among the safest and also wealthiest communities in the United States. Money Magazine has ranked Newbury Park as one of the most affluent cities in the United States and it has the 11th highest per-capita income and the fourth-highest median household income in the country. As of 2013, the household income in Newbury Park is $107,302, compared to $60,190 for California as a whole. Newbury Park is named after Egbert Starr Newbury, who was the founder of Newbury Park, Egbert Starr Newbury called his ranch here for “Newbury Park”, which ultimately became the name for the entire town. Egbert Starr Newbury and his family owned thousands of acres in the Conejo Valley and he moved from Michigan to Southern California of health reasons in 1871, opened Conejo Valley’s first post office in 1875, but left California only two years later. The first written material on the Conejo Valley comes from a Chumash folklore told to anthropologist John P. Harrington around 1900 from local Chumash Indians, mammoth fossils have been unearthed in Newbury Park in 1961 and later in 1971, which is at display at the Stagecoach Inn Museum. Newbury Park is believed to first be inhabited by Chumash beginning 6,000,7,000, Newbury Park was home to three Chumash villages, Satwiwa by the southern edge of town, as well as two villages that were located by todays Ventu Park Road. These villages were settled 2,000 years ago, and had a population of 100–200 inhabitants in each village, in addition to those three, a large Chumash village was located just north of Arroyo Conejo Open Space by Wildwood Regional Park. Other nearby villages include Lalimanux at the base of the Conejo Grade by westernmost Newbury Park, Newbury Park also contains many ancient burial sites, most near the Santa Monica Mountains in the southern portion of the community. Many artifacts have been discovered in the area, most notably by Rancho Sierra Vista in southern Newbury Park, Satwiwa, which is Chumash for the bluffs, was the name of a nearby village by the Big Sycamore Canyon. The canyon was a trading route for the Chumash- and Tongva people. These are known as CA-Ven-65, CA-Ven-261, and CA-Ven-260 near the Fieldhouse in Newbury Park, at CA-Ven-261 is an ancient Chumash burial site as suggested by a village of long duration. The Ventureño Chumash first settled in the west end of the Santa Monica Mountains because of its abundant food supply. They had plentiful of roots, berries, seeds, bulbs, acorns, walnuts, shellfish and fish were transported from the nearby Mugu Lagoon across the Santa Monicas
8.
Moorpark, California
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Moorpark is a city in Ventura County in Southern California. Moorpark was founded in 1900 when the application for the Moorpark Post Office was approved, villegas was named Moorparks first postmaster on August 8 of that year. The townsite of Moorpark was owned and surveyed by Robert W. Poindexter and his wife, the town has experienced a great amount of growth since the late 1970s. The population was 34,421 at the 2010 census, up from 31,415 at the 2000 census, Moorpark has 19 parks, all with a variety of amenities. Park hours for unlit facilities are from 6,00 a. m. to sunset, lit facilities are from 6,00 a. m. to 10,00 p. m. The Citys Dog Park is open from 7,00 a. m. to 5,00 p. m. PST, and 7,00 a. m. to 7,00 p. m. DST. The Citys Skatepark is open from 10,00 a. m. to sunset on school days, Park facilities, including picnic pavilions, ball fields, soccer fields, and tennis courts can be reserved for private use. Of these most sources agree that its origin was Admiral Lord Ansons estate Moor Park in Hertfordshire and it is mainly believed that the town of Moorpark is named after the Moorpark apricot, which used to grow in the area. The valley where Moorpark is located was inhabited by the Chumash. A Chumash village named Quimisac was located in what is now known as Happy Camp, the area was later part of the large Rancho Simi land grant given in 1795 to the Pico brothers by Governor Diego de Borica of Alta California. Robert W. Poindexter, the secretary of the Simi Land and Water Company, a map showing the townsite was prepared in November 1900. It was a resubdivision of the large lot subdivision known as Fremont, an application for a post office was submitted on June 1,1900 and approved by August of that year. The application noted that the town had a railroad depot, the town grew after the 1904 completion of a 7, 369-foot tunnel through the Santa Susana Mountains. Moorpark was then on the route of the Southern Pacific Railroads Coast Line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The depot remained in operation until it was closed in 1958 and it was eventually torn down around 1965. For one hour on November 12,1957, this fact was featured on Edwin R. Murrows See It Now television show, the reactor, called the Sodium Reactor Experiment was built by the Atomics International division of North American Aviation at the nearby Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The Sodium Reactor Experiment operated from 1957 to 1964 and produced 7.5 megawatts of power at a Southern California Edison-supplied generating station. Moorpark College opened on September 11,1967, Moorpark College is one of the few colleges that features an Exotic Animal Training and Management Program
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