In the Valley of the Cahuengas: The Story of Hollywood

From inside book:
WHEN the pioneers of the motion picture industry came to Hollywood in 1911 and rented the old Blondeau tavern and barn at Sunset and Gower for a studio, it was the lure of the hills and the sea and the sunshine rather than the history of the Cahuenga Valley that brought them into this vale. It is doubtful even today if the history of the locality of the great studios is drawn upon as a part of the "raw material” going into the making of a finished film. Yet this region is as rich in story as it is in clear skies or entrancing scenery. Its annals would make a hundred scenarios pregnant with romance, tragedy, color and action.
Over the very Pass where the first large local producers of pictures went to found their famed white city just over the hills, had gone afoot on his way from mission to mission the most romantic figure of all Western history. At the foot of the Pass, Father Junipero Serra had paused to rest one day under the shade of the friendly sycamores and oaks and there said the Mass of the Holy Wood of the Cross. After Father Serra's death his former co-laborers built San Fernando Mission and at the top of the Pass they builded also Cahuenga Chapel, tributary to the Mission. Here worshipped Chief Cahuenga and his tribe when one of the fathers journeyed over from San Fernando and held service.

This book published in 1922 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.