Chapter 1 – Introduction to Simi Valley, CA

The City of Simi Valley is located in Ventura County and lies on the western border of Los Angeles County, about 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The city is approximately 40 square miles in size and is the home of over 125,000 people according to Simi Valley’s city web site at www.simivalley.org. Although long considered a “bedroom community” because so many of Simi Valley’s residents commute to the Greater Los Angeles area for employment, the city has attracted a large amount of service and manufacturing jobs in the past decade.

As can clearly be seen in this panoramic view of the valley, seismic activity shaped Simi Valley’s physical geography. The valley is surrounded by rugged foothills which are a hiker’s paradise; geologic instability rather than visionary city planning has largely kept them that way. Simi Valley’s climate, like the surrounding areas, is categorized as Mediterranean with a dry, hot summer and a mild, rainy winter. The ocean’s influence is mitigated somewhat by the hills surrounding the valley, making Simi Valley significantly warmer than other nearby areas in the summer. Simi Valley’s most noticeable weather phenomenon is its gale force Santa Ana winds. White, wispy clouds that often accompany those winds were called shimiyi by the valley’s original human inhabitants, the Chumash Indians. The Chumash reportedly associated shimiyi with the windy valley, and a version of the word still remains in the city’s current name.