Valhalla Memorial Park was founded in 1923 by John B. Osborne and C.C. Fitzpatrick, who commissioned the rotunda as its grand entrance. The sculptor Federico Augustino Giorgi carved the cast stone and concrete — the same artist who had created the Babylonian elephants and lions for D.W. Griffith's epic film Intolerance. Construction cost more than $140,000, a substantial sum in 1924. When Burbank Airport opened nearby in 1930, Lockheed installed an aircraft warning light atop the structure. Charles Edward Taylor and Matilde Moisant attended the lighting ceremony, as did the widow of Walter Richard Brookins, whose ashes had just been interred beneath the shrine. The memorial was, from its earliest days, both monument and beacon — something for pilots to navigate by and eventually to join.

The roll of those whose remains rest within the shrine reads like a cast list for aviation's founding era. Walter Richard Brookins was a barnstormer trained by the Wright Brothers who set records before most people had seen an airplane. Augustus Roy Knabenshue was a dirigible pilot and manufacturer who personally saved the original Wright Flyer from destruction. John Bevins Moisant designed the first all-metal aircraft and became the first pilot to carry passengers across the English Channel. Elizabeth Lippincott McQueen founded the Women's International Association of Aeronautics. James Floyd Smith was a test pilot and parachute pioneer who set altitude records; his wife Hilder Florentina Smith was an aerial acrobat and parachute jumper. The sculptor Giorgi himself chose to be buried 'at the point offering the best view of the portal.'

In March 1997, aviator Linda Finch was honored at the shrine as she departed on her re-creation of Amelia Earhart's 1937 around-the-world flight attempt. More than 200 visitors and aviation dignitaries gathered for the ceremony, connecting the memorial's historic dead to a living tradition of flight. The structure was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, ensuring its preservation. Today the rotunda sits just off the Hollywood Freeway, largely overlooked by drivers speeding past — though pilots approaching Burbank know it well. Aligned precisely with the cardinal directions, its four identical marble faces catch the light differently through the day, a sundial for the aviation age.