Mission Hills
Mission Hills is a suburban neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles, California, located in the San Fernando Valley. It is near the northern junction of the Golden State Freeway (I-5) and the San Diego Freeway (I-405). The Ronald Reagan Freeway (SR-118) bisects the community. Mission Hills is at the northern end of the long Sepulveda Boulevard. Other main thoroughfares are San Fernando Mission Boulevard, Woodman Avenue, and Rinaldi, Brand, Chatsworth, Devonshire, and Lassen Streets. The boundaries are roughly Sepulveda Blvd and Interstate 405 to the west, Interstate 5 to the north and east, Van Nuys Boulevard to the southeast, and Lassen Street to the south. The Granada Hills community lies to the west, Sylmar to the north, the city of San Fernando to the northeast, Pacoima to the east, Arleta to the southeast, and Panorama City to the south. North Hollywood, is also a city within the Valley within driving distance of Mission Hills.
The historical town was Hickson, now named Mission Hills for the nearby Spanish Mission San Fernando Rey de España (1784). It includes the Andrés Pico Adobe, the second oldest residence still standing in Los Angeles. The San Fernando Mission Cemetery, located a short distance away, is one of the oldest active cemeteries within the San Fernando Valley.
The 2010 U.S. census counted 18,496 residents in the area's 91345 ZIP Code. The median age was 36.3, and the median yearly household income at that time was $62,426. In 2009, the Los Angeles Times's "Mapping L.A." project supplied the following numbers for the community of Mission Hills. Population: 18,237; median household income: $75,675.
Residents are zoned to schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Mission Hills has one private school within its boundaries; Bishop Alemany High School which is run by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
A popular tourist destination within the city is the Mission San Fernando Rey de España, a historical mission, which is a Spanish mission in the Mission Hills community. The mission was founded on September 8, 1797, and was the seventeenth of the twenty-one Spanish missions established in Alta California. Named for Saint Ferdinand, the mission is the namesake of the nearby city of San Fernando and the San Fernando Valley. The mission was secularized in 1834 and returned to the Catholic Church in 1861; it became a working church in 1920. Today the mission grounds function as a museum; the church is a chapel of ease of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
In Mission Hills, the summers are short, comfortable, dry, and mostly clear and the winters are cold, wet, windy, and partly cloudy. Over the course of the year, the temperature typically varies from 40°F to 72°F and is rarely below 32°F or above 82°F.Based on the tourism score, the best time of year to visit Mission Hills for warm-weather activities is from early July to late September.