city of Los Angeles. Sunland-Tujunga is also served by the Interstate 210 freeway. Big Tujunga Canyon Road connects Sunland-Tujunga to the Angeles Forest Highway, while La Tuna Canyon Road provides an alternate route into Sun Valley through the rugged portion of the Verdugo Mountains. Climate Sunland-Tujunga has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa under the Köppen climate classification). History Pre-colonial and Mexican eras Sunland and Tujunga were originally home to the Tongva people. In 1840, the area was part of the Rancho Tujunga Mexican land grant, but later developers marked off a plot of land known as the Tejunga Park, or the Tujunga Park Tract. The name "Tujunga" (or Tuxunga) is assumed to have meant "old woman's place" in the Fernandeño language, a dialect of the extinct Tongva language, where tuxu, "old woman", is a term for Mother Earth in Tongva mythology. The term is thought to relate to an ethnohistoric narrative, known as Khra'wiyawi, collected by Carobeth Laird from Juan and Juana Menendez at the Leonis Adobe in 1916. In the narrative, the wife of Khra'wiyawi (the chief of the region) is stricken with grief over the untimely loss of her daughter. In her sadness, she retreats to the mountains and turns to stone. It is this event that is thought to be the basis for the village name. In fact, a large rock in Little Tujunga Canyon looks like an old woman in a sitting position. Early Sunland: 1885–1925 Sunland began as Monte Vista in 1885, when of the Tejunga Park tract were divided into lots ranging from five to . One of the first uses of the new tract was the planting of of olives, which made it the largest olive orchard in Los Angeles County. In 1887, the Monte Vista Hotel was being served by the Sunland Post Office. By 1906, the appellation "Sunland" was being used by the Los Angeles Times rather than "Monte Vista". A 1907 story noted that Sunland was the "first supply store, and a good one, about seven miles from the railroad" at San Fernando, at the mouth of the Little Tejunga and Big Tejunga canyons (the old spelling). In 1908, Sunland was referred to as difficult to access, at a height of "over rough mountain roads". An automobile trip from Los Angeles took "a long day" to complete. In 1910, a Los Angeles Times correspondent wrote about Sunland: The place is