As of the U. Census the population was ,, [ 7 ] up from , in Simi Valley was once inhabited by the Chumash people , who also settled much of the region from the Salinas Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains , with their presence dating back thousands of years. Roughly 2, years later, as hunting and fishing techniques improved, the population increased significantly.
Simi Valley's name is derived from the Chumash word Shimiyi, which refers to the stringy, thread-like clouds that typify the region. Harrington , whose brother, Robert E.
Harrington lived in Simi Valley. Robert Harrington later explained the name: "The word Simiji in Indian meant the little white wind clouds so often seen when the wind blows up here and Indians living on the coast, would never venture up here when those wind clouds were in the sky. The word Simiji was constructed by whites to the word Simi. There are other explanations about the name Simi, but this one was given to me by my brother who worked over 40 years for the Smithsonian Institution and it seems most plausible to me".
The cave is located on private land owned by NASA. They camped near a native village in the valley on the 14th. The name derives from Shimiji, the name of the Chumash Native American village here before the Spanish. Strathearn and family, served as the headquarters of the rancho. After Jose de la Guerra death in , the sons of Jose de la Guerra continued to operate the ranchos. The end of their prosperity came when several years of drought in the s caused heavy losses.
The De la Guerra heirs tried every legal means, but by the s, the Rancho Tapo also slipped from their ownership, as had the rest of the Rancho. Scott β , who had made his money as an investor in the Pennsylvania Railroad during the Civil War. His goal was to locate sites for oil, since the first oil well had been developed in Titusville, Pennsylvania just a few years earlier Within a short time, a year-old man named Thomas Bard was sent west by Scott to manage the California properties.
