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In the late 19th Century, the San Fernando Valley community of Sylmar was known as "the world's largest olive ranch."
But, as more and more people moved west in the 1940s and 1950s, much of the land cleared by rancher George Porter during the 1880s to grow olives was subdivided and sold to small farmers and land speculators. Housing tracts soon replaced most of the orchards.
By the late 1970s, Sylmar was more famous as the epicenter of the...