09/04/2026
FRIDAY FLASHBACK: "THE MOTHER HOUSE"
It's a long story, reaching back into the earliest days of
Storm Lake, as well as meandering through the heart of
California history. A modest Storm Lake cottage played a role in the founding of a place you may have heard of - Hollywood.
Wilson Weddington was a man of action. At age 21, he left the Indiana farm of his youth and mustered into the Union Infantry to fight in the last months of the Civil War.
Afterward, he pushed on to the frontier and the land it offered. Weddington, "Wilse" to his friends, first established a farm on the unbroken prairie near where Storm Lake would be established. It was hard going.
The local newspaper worried that the fledgling village was then filled with bachelors - hardly a way to grow a community population. It published a list of the "illustrious 38" - 38 promising "celibate" bachelors in desperate need of female companionship. It appeared to have worked, as many on the list were soon taken, including Wilson, who was in short order hitched to Mary Ann Rutledge, attractive daughter of a Civil War surgeon.
Wilson was described in the early press as "gentlemanly," and "jolly," but he also must have been tough. He was elected sheriff of Buena Vista County, and likely came to Storm Lake when the new city snatched the county seat away from Sioux Rapids in 1878.
He would serve multiple terms as sheriff, putting up with no nonsense. The Vidette newspaper came to refer to jail as "The Weddington Hotel." Newspaper accounts speak of exploits tracking down an escaped prisoner, sharp detective skills in locating missing property, and the ever-annoying task of keeping the rowdy youth of the community from the dangerous hobby of catching rides hanging off moving trains.
Weddington was also a co-inventor of a regulator device for use on telegraphs, and later telephones. One account indicates that he applied for a patent, but there is no evidence that he profited from the venture.
The Weddingtons built themselves a tidy little Storm Lake home, where their two sons would begin their lives. All seemed promising - for a while. One of the young boys fell ill and survived a frightening case of scarlet fever during an epidemic in 1885. Winters were hard, and farming meant barely scraping by. The exciting days of pioneering were being replaced by a busy, growing Storm Lake city with more demands of a sheriff. The Weddingtons were being gradually worn down.
In 1887, Wilson traveled west to visit his sister Mollie, who had relocated with her ranch superintendent husband to the San Fernando Valley of California, what is now part of Los Angeles. He saw promise in the vast stretches of unoccupied near-desert known best to cowboys and Indians, and most of all, he was entranced by the warm and sunny weather so unlike the harsh seasons of Iowa. He was convinced that the climate offered health benefits for his weary family. "Go west, young man," Horace Greeley had written, and Wilson was soon making plans to do just that, for the second time.
He returned home, shocking the locals by immediately turning in his badge as sheriff. He disassembled the clapboard house in Storm Lake, and shipped it west piece by piece over rail or by wagon when necessary, finally arriving at a large area of sunbaked, unoccupied land that he had purchased from the desolate Lankershim Ranch for $720. Wilson set out to reassemble the home and create his fortune.
He probably didn't know he was standing on one of the most historic spots in California, purely by chance.
The region had been known as Toluca, or "fertile valley" to the native Tongva people. It was been home to Spanish missions dating to the era of the American Revolution. The precise spot where Weddington put down his Storm Lake house was where Lt. Col John Fremont of the United States and General Andres Pico of
Mexico had met on the porch of an adobe to sign the treaty that
was to end the war between their two countries The spot is known as the. beginnings of statehood for California and a vital turning point for Manifest Destiny for Americans.
The 12 acres showed little but rock and tumbleweed and was considered near useless in California, but Wilson had learned well from farming in Iowa, and adapted those growing techniques to a new environment. Soon his little house was surrounded by fields, peach orchards and the region's first walnut trees that he knew would proliferate themselves naturally as birds distributed seeds. He used the income to add to his land holdings.
His family was the first to settle in the southeast San Fernando Valley, a lonely house in the middle of nothing, but soon others started to arrive. Two wagon paths became streets, intersecting at Wilson's house in what was soon to become known as the rural settlement of Tuluca, which Wilson chose in recognition of the native people who had preceded him there (later renamed Lankershim after the pioneering ranch, and by the late 1920s, North Hollywood).
As a former sheriff, Wilson was coerced to act as the first constable, a role his son Fred would later follow in. The job meant keeping the law on the rugged frontier with no police force, as it transitioned from ranchland to homesteads. President Cleveland named Wilson as postmaster for the new district as well, with his house serving as post office.
Wilson was the driving force in establishing the community, following the model he had seen take place in Storm Lake.
He first bought a location for a general store to provide the goods and groceries needed. Then he established a bank and a land office to become its economic center. He encouraged others to follow him in agriculture and ranching, allowing an emerging rail line to pass through his fields in order to transport the locals' fruit and other goods across the country.
The Weddingtons literally raised the community. The family built or gave the land for the community's first school, library, train depot, post office, fire station, swimming pool and jail. They built its first theater, the El Portal, on the very site the Storm Lake house had first sat on. That theater is still operating and celebrating its 100th year in 2026, as "The Jewel in the North Hollywood crown." Wilson drove the gold spike that connected a rail trolley service to other emerging California cities.
The family operated all of their businesses themselves, together, with the work ethic they had brought from Storm Lake. One son later founded a fruit canning industry and led the Chamber of Commerce, the other established a banking industry and was entrenched in local high society. The family continued to be influential in development for decades and generations to come, establishing parks and advising the Museum of the San Fernando Valley. Wilson occasionally returned to Storm Lake to visit old friends and was greeted warmly, always with a mention in the local papers.
The history of the Storm Lake house gets a little hazy as a new century dawned. Some sources indicate the Weddingtons build a new house on the same street that now bears their name, others including the Los Angeles Times and the PreserveLA Foundation that the Storm Lake house was moved a bit down the road and renovated as the framework for the 1904 family home. Twenty years later, the home was moved a couple of blocks to accommodate the growth of now-booming North Hollywood. It wouldn't be its last move.
The valley rapidly became home to an entertainment industry, including major movie studios and the Walt Disney Company. North Hollywood was home to Universal City. Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra and Amelia Earheart were among its citizens.
The San Fernando Valley, which the former Storm Lake family helped to establish, is now home to nearly two million residents.
Mary Ann died relatively young, and widower Wilson never remarried. When he passed away in 1923 at age 75, the community so mourned that the entire North Hollywood business district was ordered shut down in tribute to the man who created the community from scratch.
WIlson Weddington, former sheriff tasked with chasing boys off train cabooses in Storm Lake, is buried in a spot of honor in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, alongside celebrities like Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, Fay Wray of "King Kong" fame, Cecil B. DeMille, Jayne Mansfield, Judy Garland, mobster Bugsy Segel, Beatle George Harrison and many more.
In recognition of Wilson Weddington's foundational role in the development of North Hollywood, several streets, landmarks, and public spaces bear his family's name. Weddington Street, where that Storm Lake house was nailed back together, is named in his honor. Two parks and a square bear the Weddington family name.
Wilson's son built the first tennis court in the region, and the Weddington Golf & Tennis club is a landmark in Studio City, built on what was once Weddington Ranch land. A residential development bears the name, as does the Weddington Investment Company, founded by Wilson and his sons, and continuing under a great-grandson.
The aged Weddington House, which had once sat vacant, vandalized and dilapidated, was saved from demolition, moved and is being renovated.
Development hungry leaders had planned to have it moved miles away, but hundreds of locals fought the plan and convinced the city council to keep it in North Hollywood as a permanent landmark.
It was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2007 by the city's Cultural Heritage Commission, acknowledging its significance as the "mother house" of North Hollywood.
"Storm Lake Iowa 1890s: A Model for North Hollywood" proclaims a modern-day exhibit featured on the Museum of the San Fernando Valley website.
When it was saved a few years back, two large shipping crates were found in the attic, probably used to carry pieces of the home and furnishings the 1,700 miles across the country.
They were stenciled with two words.
"Storm Lake."
Photos: 1. The Weddington family photographed in Storm Lake shortly before heading west, where they would become founders of what is today North Hollywood. Wilson Weddington was one of the earliest sheriffs of Buena Vista County. The photo comes from the CSUN University Archive. 2. A display on the Weddington family, transplants from Storm Lake, from the Historical Marker Database web site. 3. The Weddington home and post office in 1894, shortly after it was moved from Storm Lake to the future site of North Hollywood. 4. The Weddington home amid a growing North Hollywood community. 5. The Weddington home in dilapidated condition prior to being rescued. 6. "The Mother House" of the San Fernando Valley in mid-restoration.
