Without A Net: Tagged 'tarzan'

Tarzana has a funny name, but it's no coincidence that it sounds like a certain king of the jungle — the town was named for Tarzan. Tarzana's celebrating 100 years of Edgar Rice Burroughs' first Tarzan novel, 1912's "Tarzan of the Apes."

After the success of the Tarzan novel, Burroughs bought a 550-acre piece of land in 1919 from General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and Burroughs set up a ranch that he named after Tarzan, according to Tarzana reference librarian David Hagopian. Local residents started calling the area around the ranch Tarzana, and when Burroughs sold off the ranch and developers moved in, the name stuck and became the official name of the community in 1928.

Tarzana is flying into their Tarzan reverie starting Friday with the U.S. Postal Service holding a ceremony with descendants of Burroughs to celebrate the first day of a brand new Burroughs stamp, based on a 1934 photo of Burroughs and an image of Tarzan clinging onto a signature vine.