Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c. 1475-1519) was a Spanish explorer who in 1513 became the first European to lay eyes on the Pacific Ocean. (Well, his crew was there too.) This street, one of the oldest in the San Fernando Valley, was laid out in 1911 (as Balboa Avenue) on the enormous Tract 1000, owned by the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Company. This syndicate consisted of über-capitalists Harrison Gray Otis, Harry Chandler, Moses H. Sherman, H.J. Whitley, and Otto F. Brant, who had bought half the Valley from Isaac Van Nuys. Tract 1000 was the first step in transforming the SFV from arid pastureland into bustling suburbia; perhaps these men saw themselves as modern-day conquistadors, as other Tract 1000 streets were named for famous explorers, including Alvarado (now Woodley), Cabrillo (now Haskell), Cortez (now Fulton), Diaz (now Coldwater Canyon), and De Soto. In 1986, a 27 acre lake was planned for the Sepulveda Basin Recreational Area, borrowing this street’s name; six years later, it was finally filled with water. Six years after that, in 1998, some Van Nuys residents began calling their neighborhood “Lake Balboa” in order to increase property values. Eventually the name stuck.
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