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Toluca Lake is a district in the San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, California, 12 miles (19 km) north of downtown Los Angeles. Toluca Lake started out as farmland but today is home to affluent residents. Past and present residents include Bob Hope, W.C. Fields, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Gene Autry, Doris Day, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Andy Griffith, Kirsten Dunst, Miley Cyrus, Rick Dees, Goldie Hawn, Henry Winkler, Andy Garcia, Markie Post, James Garner, Ron Howard, and Amelia Earhart

Toluca Lake is situated in the southeastern San Fernando Valley between the city of Burbank, the Los Angeles district of North Hollywood, and the unincorporated county area of Universal City. The area’s historic boundaries are Cahuenga Boulevard, Camarillo Street, Clybourn Avenue, and the Los Angeles River, and it is located between two major film and television production studios, Universal Studios to the south and Warner Bros. to the east. The Santa Monica Mountains surround the area. A 6-acre body of water called Toluca Lake is located near the district’s southeastern boundaries; water originally came from springs, but currently wells at the lake’s edges maintain the water level. The bottom of the lake is surfaced with four inches of asphalt concrete to halt water seepage. Owned by the surrounding homeowners, the lake has been maintained by the the Toluca Lake Property Owners Association, a non-profit corporation established in 1934. Being completely surrounded by private property, the lake is virtually never seen except by property owners and their visitors.

The Bob's Big Boy Restaurant of Burbank (est. 1949), the oldest such restaurant in America and a California Point of Historical Interest, is located just beyond the boundary of Toluca Lake and is often misidentified as being located there. Toluca Lake was also home to the first IHOP restaurant in 1958, though it is no longer located there. The local Catholic church, Saint Charles Borromeo, is attended by various celebrities and has played host to several celebrity weddings and funerals, including the funerals of Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Choir director Paul Salamunovich was the former director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Several condominium and apartment complexes are located in Toluca Lake, along Riverside Drive and Moorpark Way. The first condominium complex to be built there is at 10470 Riverside Drive, erected in 1974.

* Brooke Burns * Steve Carell * Miley Cyrus * Hilary Duff * Kirk Fogg * Andy Garcia * Jennifer Love Hewitt * Bob Hope * Jonas Brothers * Wayne Knight * George Lopez * Eric McCormack * Demi Lovato * Jason Priestley * Ashley Tisdale

In 1893, a petition was filed with the U.S. Postal Service for the area's first post office, to be named "Toluca Post Office." General Charles Forman, a wealthy local landowner and one of the proponents of the petition, later stated that he had chosen the name "Toluca" from a Paiute Indian word meaning "fertile" or "beautiful" valley. Though part of a larger area traditionally called "Lankershim" after a Colonel of the same name — and with a Southern Pacific Railroad train station named "Lankershim" also opened in 1893 across from the post office — Forman called his own ranch and the surrounding land "Toluca." One of the wealthiest men in Nevada, Forman had made his fortune from nothing, starting in mining, then cattle ranching, and then lumber. Falling in love with and marrying Los Angeles native Mary Agnes Gray, he soon moved to the area in the late 1880s and started the Kern River Company, a power company which delivered electricity from generators at the Kern River to Los Angeles. He also bought a large parcel of rich farm land, which included much of modern day Toluca Lake and at least the western portion of the "ancient and historical" marshy pond now called Toluca Lake. By 1923, the Forman Toluca Lake Ranch was a flourishing producer of peaches, apples and walnuts. That year, investors bought and developed the land as "Toluca Lake Park." This initial venture failed, but a new group soon took over, renaming the development company "The Toluca Lake Company." With a "vision of creating a first 'bedroom community' for Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley," the company formally changed the name of the community to simply Toluca Lake, and adopted as their logo the "swan on rippled water" image still associated with the community today