Tujunga is a Kizh (a.k.a. Tongva) word which linguists have translated as “place of the old woman”. Who was the old woman in question? Some say Mother Earth – simple as that. Others say that, according to Kizh myth, she was a grief-stricken mother who fled to the hills and turned to stone. (The myth was allegedly inspired by a large rock shaped like an old woman somewhere in Little Tujunga Canyon, but since no one has identified this rock after all these years, I’m skeptical.) Regardless, Tujunga was a Kizh settlement in the northeast Valley. It was later the site of Rancho Tujunga, an 1840 land grant given to Pedro and Francisco López that is now the Sunland-Tujunga neighborhood. As for the two Tujunga avenues, NoHo’s was named in 1887 on a Lankershim Ranch Land & Water Co. map but was called Foster Ave. from 1917 until 1925; Burbank‘s was also laid out in 1887 and has kept its name throughout.
Find it on the map:
