Local city information for Agoura Hills, CA

Agoura Hills is a city (incorporated in 1982) in Los Angeles County, California, and has the ZIP code 91301. The population was 20,537 at the 2000 census. This city on the Ventura Freeway (U.S. Route 101) straddles the border between the county of Los Angeles to the east, west and south and Ventura County to the north. It is approximately 30 miles northwest of Downtown Los Angeles and less than 10 miles west of the Los Angeles City limits (Woodland Hills), and is located in the eastern Conejo Valley. Agoura is also situated next to Calabasas, Malibu, Oak Park, and Westlake Village.


The area was first settled by the Chumash Indians, and later by Spanish Franciscan missionaries. As the California coast was settled by Spaniards in the 1500s, El Camino Real, a road from Loreto, BCS, Mexico to Sonoma, California, and connecting the Spanish missions in California, was built through the heart of what would later be known as Agoura Hills.

In about 1800, Miguel Ortega was granted a Spanish grazing concession called Rancho Las Virgenes or El Rancho de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Las Virgenes. The grant was abandonned after Ortega's death in 1810, and José Maria Dominguez was given Rancho Las Virgenes as a Mexican land grant in 1834. Maria Antonia Machado de Reyes purchased the rancho from Dominguez in 1845. The "Reyes Adobe" ranch headquarters can still be found today in a museum along Reyes Adobe Rd. in central Agoura Hills. The historic Reyes Adobe Museum, owned by the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department, was built in the mid-2000s around the site of the old adobe.

By 1900, Agoura Hills was being used as a popular stage stop for travelers along the Camino Real because of its natural spring at the foothills of Ladyface Mountain, one of Agoura Hills' defining geographic features.

In the 1920s, the community was briefly known as Picture City, as Paramount Pictures owned a ranch in the area used for filming Westerns. To obtain a post office of its own the residents were required to choose a one word name, and in 1927 chose a misspelling of the last name of Pierre Agoure, a local Basque man and French immigrant who had settled in the area in 1871 to live the lifestyle of the Mexican rancher and styled himself Don Pierre Agoure, accordingly. Agoure was a successful sheep herder and had a reputation as a swashbuckler. His name was chosen for the post office as it was the shortest name proposed.

Rapid growth occurred in the Agoura Hills area starting in the late 1960s, in the wake of the construction of the Ventura Freeway through the city's heart, an action that isolated the northern half of the city from the south. The first housing tracts started in Agoura were Hillrise, Liberty Canyon and Lake Lindero. Growth continued at a rapid pace during the 1970s. Schools were built and much of downtown was erected.

In 1978, residents of the Agoura Hills area banded together to lobby Sacramento to widen the Kanan Bridge. Legislation was introduced and passed requiring the State Department of Transportation to award contracts for widening of the Kanan Road bridge overpass, over the Ventura Freeway, from two lanes to four lanes.

In 1982, the residents of the City of Agoura Hills voted in favor of cityhood by a 68% majority. Agoura Hills became the 83rd City in Los Angeles County. Elected to the first City Council were Mayor Fran Pavley, Mayor Pro Tem Carol Sahm, Councilmembers Ernest Dynda, John Hood and Vicky Leary. Incorporating a year after neighboring Westlake Village, the drive for cityhood in the region was largely based on public discontent with the county's failure to limit residential development of the area, motives that influenced Malibu and Calabasas to follow suit in 1991.

The 1980s was a period of tremendous growth, with large land areas being subdivided into housing tracts and a great wave of migration of people into the city. In the 1990s numerous businesses also set up shop in the city, and the downtown area was filled with shops and restaurants.

In 1996, however, the murder of Jimmy Farris (the infamous Brandon Hein case) shook the city and awakened it to a rising drug problem and petty theft crime wave among its young. As a result, the city began sponsoring live music competitions and concerts in local parks (see Music).

List your home on the MLS in Agoura Hills, California

Copyright © Owners.com 2012. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy • Terms & Conditions • Site Map

Equal Housing Opportunity