In Simi, Old Times Not Forgotten

As a young girl growing up in an area that would later become the city of Simi Valley, Ruby Taylor Stevens enjoyed walking through open fields to collect wildflowers.

“My how things have changed,” the 83-year-old said as she peered toward the back of the K mart store on Tierra Rejada Road. “There used to not be much of anything in this town when I was young. Not much at all.”

Stevens, who was born in the area in 1914, joined about 150 other Simi Valley old-timers for the 33rd annual Golden Fifty Picnic at the Strathearn Historical Park Sunday.

Organized by the Simi Valley Historical Society, the annual picnic brought together present and former residents who lived in the area 50 or more years ago.

Over a lunch of roast beef and ham sandwiches, potato salad and slices of watermelon, they chatted with old friends, joked and reminisced about a town that bears little resemblance to what it has become. With a population of 103,700, Simi Valley is now the third largest city in the county.

“I tell you, this place has changed so much it’s just about impossible to compare it to back when I was a child,” Stevens said. “Back then though it was a lot more friendly and you knew everybody, but now people don’t even know the names of their neighbors.”

Stevens, who moved to Sylmar two years ago, said she’s watched the town grow from a lazy hamlet surrounded by ranches and verdant groves of apricots and walnut trees to the populous, traffic-choked model of suburbia it is today.

“Back then, we didn’t know what a freeway was,” she said. “There were even times in winter when we’d get stuck here because of all the mud and rain. You can’t imagine anything like that happening today.”

The area that is now Simi Valley has a long and colorful past beginning with the Chumash tribes who first settled there in a village named Shimiji or, loosely translated, “little white wind cloud.”

The Spanish missionaries who moved into the area during the 18th and 19th centuries retained the traditional Chumash name, but pronounced it as Simi.

Through the early 20th century the valley flourished as home to a number of ranches and farms. However, when the underground aquifers emptied in the 1950s and ‘60s the farmers and ranchers began to divide and sell their property to developers.

“Simi Valley didn’t change very much for a long time and it wasn’t until the ‘60s that the area really started to grow,” said Pat Havens, a member of the city’s historical society. “That’s when we saw the subdivisions and tract homes and all the shopping centers go up.”

On Oct. 10, 1969, Simi Valley became an incorporated city and has since mushroomed into a sprawling suburbia whose low crime rate and good schools have served as a magnate for people fleeing the urban ills of neighboring Los Angeles.

However, those at Sunday’s picnic remembered well the period when the wells still flowed, the sheep still roamed and life was nothing less than idyllic.

“When I was a boy we’d have to go to Moorpark to see a movie and into the San Fernando Valley to get a prescription filled,” said 69-year-old Emmanuel Banaga. “Back then, boy, it was small, but it was still a lot of fun.”

Banaga said that kids had to come up with some inventive ways, some of them mischievous, to have fun in a town that offered little amusement.

“One Halloween, we’d go out and tip over the outhouses on the ranches,” he said slapping his knee and laughing. “That sure was fun.”

William Bunker, who was 10 when his family moved to Simi Valley from Sinaloa, Mexico, in 1928, said that when he looks around at all the parking lots, strip malls and buildings today, he sees the rugged, undeveloped places he loved as a boy.

“As a kid, my friends and I used to pack up our stuff and camp over where Rocketdyne is today,” said the 79-year-old Simi Valley resident. “And I remember applying for a job as a sheepherder where that shopping center is on Tierra Rejada.”

Although many of the picnickers said they didn’t mind all the people, the boxy strip malls, freeways and traffic, it was obvious that a small part of them still pined for the days when they’d run to Mrs. Beech’s General Store to load up on lemon drop candies and gooey taffy or hike to the Santa Susana Pass to watch crimson sunsets.

“To be honest with you, I hate to see this place getting so big, but I guess that’s the price of progress,” Stevens said. “Even though it’s bigger and more busy than it was before, it’s still a pleasant place with a lot of memories.”