A small portion of the community, outside the Simi Valley city limits to the south of the Ventura County Metrolink rail line, is an unincorporated area and census-designated place (CDP).

[10] The historic Santa Susana Depot was located there before being moved farther east along the coast route railroad and made into a museum.

The Simi Valley train station opened in 1993 about midway between the historic site and the museum location next to Santa Susana Knolls.

It is a sparsely populated rural area with rustic housing and no set-houses, in a hilly and relatively forested part of the valley.

Films and TV-series filmed here includes Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Lone Ranger, Adventures of Superman, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Three Musketeers, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, Fort Apache, Star Trek, Wagon Train, and hundreds of other mostly Western-inspired movies and TV-shows.

[16] The rural Santa Susana is home to numerous species of native wildlife, including large amounts of snakes, coyotes, hawks and mountain lions.

[21] The area has likely been populated by Native-American peoples for as much as 8,000 years[22]-12,000 years ago[23] The Burro Flats Painted Cave, now situated on the protected private Santa Susana Field Laboratory property, was the setting for a winter solstice ritual for the Ventureño Chumash people.

The cave, which is on the back wall of a sandstone shelter about 16 ft long and 4 ft high, was discovered at the turn of the 20th century[24][25] The Chumash of Santa Susana were unlike other settlements in the Simi Valley not only located near other Ventureño Chumash settlements, but the Chumash here traded with the Tataviam people who also settled in the Santa Susana Mountains, as well as the Gabrielino people who inhabited the opposite side of the Santa Susana Pass.

In 1914, the town was home to eight buildings: Four owned by the Crinklaw family, a schoolhouse, the Santa Susana Depot, the Southern Pacific Warehouse and a blacksmith shop.

[36] The area has been home to numerous cults, including the Pisgah Grande (in Las Llajas Canyon, seven miles northeast of town) and May Otis Blackburn's "Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven", sometimes referred to as "the Sixth Cult", high up in the Susana Knolls.

In 1949, messiah Krishna Venta's cult "WKFL Foundation of the World" lived in Box Canyon right by the Santa Susana Pass.

[14][15] The Santa Susana Nuclear Disaster in July 1959 was the worst in American history, and was kept hidden by the United States Atomic Energy Commission for more than twenty years when it was exposed by students from UCLA in the LA Times.

This area includes the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a government facility previously used for research and design of rocket engines and nuclear reactors.

The CDP is nestled up against the northern slope of the Simi Hills and surrounds the Santa Susana Mountains at an average elevation of 1,165 feet (355 m).

[51] It is home to an abundance of wildlife, including larger mammals such as numerous cougars, coyotes, bobcats, grey foxes and more common species such as the Virginia opossum, California raccoon, ring-tailed cat, California vole, desert cottontail, Botta's pocket gopher as well as the spotted- and striped skunk.

Large undeveloped areas provide natural habitat to numerous species, and saves the wildlife of the Santa Monica Mountains from genetic isolation.

As in the rest of the Simi Valley, large areas are assigned parks or open space preserves and are protected wildlife habitats.