of the land except the parcel northeast of the mission was used for wheat farming. Ben Porter's portion to the west (now Porter Ranch) remained one of the last parts of the Valley to be developed. In the eastern section nearest the San Gabriel Mountains, Maclay platted the Valley's first town, San Fernando, on September 15, 1874. The town plan included land for a station for Leland Stanford's Southern Pacific Railroad from Los Angeles, which became the depot for the north Valley farmers to ship their wheat crops south to the port at Wilmington. In 1876, Southern Pacific opened a tunnel through the pass at San Fernando and ran the first through train from the transcontinental railroad's western terminus in San Francisco to Los Angeles. From this time, rail travel superseded long distance travel by stagecoach in California. The world wheat market remained strong through the 1870s and early 1880s, but then supply began to exceed demand, and prices began to fall. When the rival Santa Fe Railroad reached Los Angeles in 1885, fare wars between the two transportation giants brought ever more settlers to Southern California, and pressure rose to subdivide the great ranches of the Valley. In 1886, David Burbank sold his ranch to Los Angeles land speculators who formed the Providencia Land, Water and Development Company, with Burbank as one of the directors. The land was surveyed and a business district was laid out, surrounded by residential lots. The outlying area was divided into small farms. They named the town Burbank and opened the tract for sale on May 1, 1887. In October 1887, J. B. Lankershim and eight other developers organized the Lankershim Ranch Land and Water Company, purchasing north of the Caheunga Pass from the Lankershim Farming and Milling Company. Lankershim established a townsite which the residents named Toluca (later Lankershim, and now North Hollywood) along the old Tulare Road from Cahuenga Pass to San Fernando. On April 1, 1888, they offered ready-made small farms for sale, already planted with deep-rooted deciduous fruit and nut trees—mostly peaches, pears, and walnuts—that could survive the rainless summers of the Valley by relying on the high water table along the Pacoima River (now the central or main branch of the Tujunga Wash) rather than surface irrigation. In 1888, Ben Porter sold a portion of his property near the base of Santa Susana Pass to the Porter Land and