About Toluca Lake

Toluca Lake is an affluent neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles located in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles County, California, 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Downtown. The name is also given to a private natural lake which is fed by the Los Angeles River and maintained by neighboring property owners. A small part of Toluca Lake spills over into nearby Burbank.

According to an analysis of the 2000 census data by the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles section of Toluca Lake is an affluent, domestically stable, well-educated, older-aged, low-density neighborhood of the city.

The history of Toluca Lake can be traced back to the days of the Tongva Indians, followed by Spanish and Mexican occupation and development. It was part of the early rancho system and then it was later divided, with the neighborhood being known as Forman Toluca Ranch. In 1923, investors bought and developed the land as "Toluca Lake Park".

In recent years the neighborhood has been the home of noted entertainment and other personalities and was the site of the wedding reception for Ronald and Nancy Reagan. More recently yet there has been opposition to a proposed development in North Hollywood by NBCUniversal and Thomas Properties Group.

Toluca Lake started out as Forman Toluca Ranch, a ranch known for its crops of peaches, apples and walnuts.

Aviator Amelia Earhart lived in Toluca Lake on Valley Spring Lane after marrying flamboyant publishing magnate George P. Putnam in 1931. The Spanish colonial-style home, which still exists today, features a front-yard tree under which she signed her round-the-world flight plan. She made her home in Toluca Lake because the best aircraft in the world were being designed and built nearby at the Lockheed plant in Burbank. Entertainer Bob Hope moved to Toluca Lake in the late 1930s and lived there until his death in 2003 at the age of 100. In the 1938 Little Rascals film Three Men in a Tub, the kids hold a regatta on the lake, which is shown to be still largely surrounded by open country at that time. In 1945, Frank Sinatra and his family moved into a house in Toluca Lake and spent weekends at their Lone Palm Hotel in Palm Springs. The house was located down the street from where Earhart had lived.Former actor and 40th President of the United States Ronald Reagan had his wedding reception with second wife Nancy Reagan at the Toluca Lake home of actor (and best man) William Holden on March 4, 1952.