Close enough to participate in the good things Los Angeles has to offer, yet far enough away to enjoy a semi-rural small town atmosphere, Simi Valley is a very special place to live and raise a family. Consistently ranked as one of the top two cities of its size in the nation, Simi Valley’s approximately 120,000 citizens are blessed with excellent cultural and recreational facilities, rich history, a marvelous climate, limitless outdoor recreational opportunities, and a superb natural environment.
Location
Located in the south-west corner of Thousand Oaks, the City of Simi Valley is close to the San Fernando Valley and the border with Los Angeles County, and less than 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean.
Geography/Terrain
Simi Valley is 700-1000 feet above sea level in rolling chaparral and coniferous forest country, much of which is now cultivated for growing citrus and other fruit and vegetables.
Distance to 3 closest major cities
Simi Valley is 22 miles from Los Angeles, around 25 miles from Oxnard and Ventura, and nine miles from Thousand Oaks.
Jobs
Simi Valley’s proximity to Los Angeles and its low taxes and business-friendly city government have attracted many businesses to relocate there, and to neighboring towns like Moorpark and Thousand Oaks. LA’s closeness also makes it easy for those who like to enjoy the peace, security, and quality of country living but who prefer to work in the “big city” to commute there quickly and easily. Over a third of Simi Valley’s working population is employed in professional, technical or managerial occupations. Median household income is well above average and unemployment is very low.
Housing
Simi Valley offers a wider price range for first time home buyers than most other cities in Thousand Oaks. Townhomes and condos are priced from about $240,000 and single family homes from $450,000, while there are also upmarket homes with price-tags of several million. The market is well balanced however, with everything from golf and equestrian communities to charming family homes in quiet tree-lined neighborhood streets. Rentals for one and two bedroom apartments and duplexes ranges from $1,300 to $1,500 per month, while rentals for two and three bedroom houses range from $1,600 to $2,750 per month. There are seven mobile home parks in the city.
Parks/Sports/Recreation/Golf
With close to thirty parks and the longest system of horseback trails in the United States, Simi Valley is a wonderful place for outdoor pursuits like mountain biking, hiking, camping and picnics, or for birdwatching, hunting, and fishing. The city also has plenty of space for organized sports, as well as four public swimming pools, two major bowling alleys, two very popular ice-skating rinks, and three public golf courses.
On the doorstep of Simi Valley, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is a wonderful resource for the people of the area, extending from the heights of the Santa Monica Range through beautiful desert canyons to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. With a Mediterranean climate and ecosystem, the Recreation Area is home to a wide diversity of flora and fauna and it is rich in the history of the original native American inhabitants. There are extensive trail systems through the mountains and canyons for hikers, cyclists and horse-riding, wonderful beaches for swimming, surfing, and sun-bathing, and many parks and public areas for picnics or camping.
Corriganville Park is a fascinating mix of stunning landscapes, wildlife conservation initiatives, and movie history. Originally owned by cowboy and actor Ray "Crash" Corrigan, the park was the setting for hundreds of movies and T.V. westerns in the 1940’s and 1950’s. It was later opened to the public as a western-themed amusement park, with stuntmen, movie lots, a working western town, Indian crafts, stagecoach rides, pony rides, and boating on a lake, and often attracted as many as 20,000 people on weekends. Since 1988 it has been part regional park and part wildlife corridor connecting the Simi Hills with the Santa Susana Mountains.
The beautiful California landscape provides the perfect setting for the many magnificent golf courses in and around Simi Valley. One of the city’s outstanding public courses, the Simi Valley Golf Course is set beside a beautiful canyon and a lake, with ponds and a stream contributing to make it a very challenging course. Lost Canyons Golf Club is Thousand Oaks’s only 36-hole public golf facility, and has been twice recognized by Golf Magazine in its Top 10 Best New Courses. Also featuring on this list is the fabulous Moorpark Country Club, a superb golf course community in the picturesque heart of Thousand Oaks's equestrian, citrus and avocado ranch countryside which welcomes visiting players.
Special Attractions/Events
One of Simi Valley’s premier attractions is the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, drawing pilgrims and scholars from across the nation. In addition to vast quantities of papers, photographs, videos, movie film, and other official records from Reagan’s service as Governor and President, the Museum houses such fascinating memorabilia as the former President’s high school yearbook, a nuclear missile deactivated when the President and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the INF treaty, and a life-sized replica of the Oval Office as it was on the last day of Reagan’s presidency.
Housed in a beautifully restored and renovated 1920’s church, the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center is a community facility of which residents are justly proud. Its superb theater seats 240, and with its state-of-the-art sound and lighting plays host to a wide range of top local, regional, and national artists and shows. Adjacent art galleries and a community room feature local fine artists and exhibitions and performances by local children and young people.
For a glimpse of Simi Valley’s rich past, the Strathearn Historical Park and Museum has docent-led tours of its exhibits. It also features educational events and an annual performance in which actors from the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center play characters from local history in a Simi Valley Ghost Tour.
For a truly unique experience Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village is a must. This remarkable "village" of shrines, walkways, sculptures, and buildings constructed entirely from recycled items and discards from the local dump, is lauded by art scholars, the State of California, and the National Register of Historic Places, as a major folk art achievement. And what an accomplishment it is! Starting in 1956 at 60 years of age, Tressa Prisbey spent 25 years creating remarkable structures to house her collection of 17,000 pencils, so that today Bottle Village is composed of 13 buildings, 20 sculptures, and a fantastic assemblage of shrines, wishing wells, walkways, and other idiosyncratic constructions including The Leaning Tower of Bottle Village, the Dolls Head Shrine, and bird baths made from car headlights.
Interesting Facts/Historic Buildings and Places
For many centuries the site of the city of Simi Valley was occupied by the Chumash people, whose culture and artistry were among the most highly developed of California native peoples. They were accomplished basket weavers and wooden bowl makers and left beautiful cave paintings, including a very famous pictograph in a cave at Burro Flats. The pictographs in this cave are now understood to have been part of a system of astronomical observation, and celebrations were held in the cave at the time of the winter solstice. Many interesting Chumash sites remain in the Simi Valley area, and the local museum exhibits many beautiful cultural artifacts.
El Rancho Simi, created when the Spanish colonized the Simi Valley area in the late 18th Century, was one of the largest land grants ever made. An adobe structure thought to have been built in around 1795, served as a stopover place between the Missions San Fernando Rey and San Buenaventura. Now known as the Simi Adobe, part of it still stands and is the focal point of the local Historical Park.
Early American pioneers began to trickle into the area in the 1860’s, taking up sheep and cattle ranching, or in a few cases growing grain. Serious settlement began in the 1880’s, and the area started to really develop in 1904 with the arrival of the main railroad line through the Santa Susana Mountains. The town of Santa Susana was established as a rail depot and grew steadily as the agricultural potential of the Simi Valley was recognized. By the nineteen-twenties the town was flourishing and the picturesque deco suburb of Santa Susana Knolls was built. It remains a charming and popular part of Simi Valley today. After World War Two the area’s population and popularity grew steadily and the City of Simi Valley was incorporated on October 10, 1969.
While it consistently vies with neighboring Thousand Oaks as the first or second safest city of its size in America, Simi Valley gained some notoriety as the home of the awful Charles Manson “family” during the 1960’s and as the location of the infamous 1992 Rodney King trial which sparked major riots in Los Angeles on April 29 of that year.
- NUMBER1EXPERTS™ 
