Sunland-Tujunga Chamber of Commerce - Serving Community & Business

Community information about Sunland, Tujunga, Shadow Hills and Lake View Terrace, which are located just 10 miles north of Los Angeles in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Sunland-Tujunga is probably best known around the world
as the place where a space alien landed and was befriended
by a young boy named Elliot in Steven Spielberg's
blockbuster 1982 film, ET, the Extraterrestrial.

The community is located in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, about 14 miles north of the Los Angeles civic center. Generally thought to be a part of the San Fernando Valley, Sunland-Tujunga is actually located in a valley of its own — the Tujunga Valley which opens into the northern edge of the larger San Fernando Valley.

The Tujunga Valley is about six miles long and two miles wide. Consisting mostly of ranch land and orchards at the turn of the last century, much of the area is now filled with single family residences mixed with pockets of low-rise apartment and condominium buildings, though remnants of the orchards and ranches still stand.

Commercial development consists primarily of smaller retail businesses located along the Foothill Boulevard corridor from the Lowell Avenue city limits on the east to the Foothill Freeway on the west.

Most of the area is located within the northernmost limits of the City of Los Angeles with general services provided by the municipality. Portions of Big Tujunga, Little Tujunga and Kagel canyons are in the unincorporated area served by the County of Los Angeles.

Major geographic features include Big Tujunga Canyon whose waters have spread out at its mouth over the centuries to form the Tujunga Wash, the largest natural flood plain in Southern California and a feature clearly visible from earth orbit. The Wash feeds into Hansen Lake which was created by the construction of Hansen Dam, one of the longest dams in the world when it was built.

The San Gabriel Mountains, with its series of magnificent mountain peaks that separate the Los Angeles basin from the Mojave Desert, forms the north and northeast borders of the valley while the Verdugo Mountains separate the Tujunga Valley from the communities of Glendale, Burbank, and the rest of the Los Angeles metropolitan area to the south.

Article Courtesy of the Students of Verdugo Hills High School.