Tarzana was actually named, rather famously, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books early in the 20th century. Burroughs bought and began to subdivide the ranch retreat of Harrison Gray Otis, the publisher and editor of the Los Angeles Times, who originally acquired his corner of the Valley in the first divvying up of the old Lankershim Ranch — nearly half of the entire San Fernando Valley — by Los Angeles interests preparing for the 1913 arrival of water in the aqueduct from the Owens Valley. Burroughs lived on his Tarzana Ranch for more than a decade and got the U.S. Post Office to recognize the beginnings of a town center along Ventura Boulevard as Tarzana, California.
