Photo Essay: Tarzan's tour guide to the San Fernando Valley

In 1915, Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, purchased a ranch in the San Fernando Valley owned by Los Angeles Times founder General Harrison Gray Otis. Burroughs christened it Tarzana. In 1927, the residents of the area named the entire town after the famous ape man.

What would Tarzan do if he were to visit Tarzana today? He'd most likely be interested in animals, caves, natural food, and jungle-gym like stuctures, I imagine. Here's what I would recommend:

The Farm

(8101 Tampa Ave in Reseda, CA)

Located on a corner lot in a dense suburban neighborhood, This dilapidated petting zoo and pony ride stable will provide many valuable life lessons to your children. They'll witness: Darwinian struggles for survival, nature's relentless struggle to take back man made structures when they are not maintained, uncontrolled breeding, and the dire consequences of overpopulation.

But that's why I love this crazy, anachronistic compound populated with dozens of goats, chickens, ostriches, emus, cattle, llamas, ponies, and other farm animals, most of them freely mingling with the human visitors.

You can purchase a paper cup filled with feed pellets at the entrance, but do not allow your child to hold it -- he or she will be knocked over by one of the roaming packs of hungry goats and possibly trampled as the slit-pupiled beasts devour their plunder.

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Vanalden Cave

(Encino. Go south on Vanalden until it hits a dead end. Follow the trail on the left. After about 1/2 mile, you'll reach the Vanalden Cave.)

San Fernando Valley high schoolers call this cave the "'shroom room." Nearly every square inch of its soft surface has been carved with heavy metal druggie hieroglyphics. In the daytime, when I visit it with my family, it seems spooky and ghost-inhabited. At night, the teenagers take over.

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Red Barn Feed & Saddlery

(18601 Oxnard St., Tarzana)

When the city built the Orange Line bus way through the valley a few years ago, they had to route around the Red Barn Feed & Saddlery, because residents couldn't stand the idea of not having a convenient location to buy bales of alfalfa (they sell over 60 tons a year) and newly-hatched chicks. Located next to Tarzana's Melody Acres neighborhood (one of the few areas in the city of LA where people can keep farm animals), this old-fashioned feed warehouse offers free popcorn for urban farmers.

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Nike Missile Launch Site

(17500 Mulholland Drive, Encino)

In the 1950s and 1960s, Los Angeles was home to 16 Nike-Ajax supersonic anti-aircraft missile launch sites. You can visit one of them in the hills overlooking the Valley at San Vicente Mountain Park. This one had a radar system and computers to guide the missiles stored in the Sepulveda Basin. The non-operational anti-aircraft structure still stands, and the radar tower affords a breathtaking sunset views.

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Follow Your Heart

(21825 Sherman Way, Canoga Park)

This vegetarian market was founded in 1970, and was a hang out for the famous Nature Boys of Southern California, a pack of health-nut proto-hippies who wore robes, beards, and long hair and could be seen walking barefoot along Ventura Boulevard in the 1950s. Gypsy Boots and Eden Abhez are no longer with us, but you can get a taste of the Nature Boys diet' in the back room restaurant, which serves brown rice, vegan chili, steamed vegetables, and with peanut butter shakes.