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This two story ranch house in Canoga Park is a remembrance of the
ranching days and agricultural past of the San Fernando Valley.
The large structure located in Shadow Ranch Park is a hybrid of
traditional, Southern California styles: rancho adobe construction
having been reworked and remodeled with redwood additions and architectural
details and components.
The ranch today is a shadow of its once industrious past. This
prosperous ranch in the west San Fernando Valley began as a wheat
farm under the leadership of Issac Van Nuys and his San Fernando
Valley Homestead Association, eventually organized as a wheat enterprise
called the Los Angeles Farm and Milling Company with Albert Workman
as its superintendent. After 1869, Workman purchased the 9,000 acre
ranch himself, and also cultivated another 4,000 acres outlying
his property. At one time, there were seventy barns on the Workman
Ranch and a thousand head of cattle. Wagon trains carried the harvested
wheat to Los Angeles.
The entire west end of the ranch house was one large room, over
forty feet long, in which approximately seventy workers could sit
down to eat. The center of the house was the family dining room,
and the east rooms held a parlor and an office. Today, the residence
stands on approximately 13 acres of the original ranch property.
The Workman Ranch and the residence have special notoriety in Los
Angeles history; the ranch house grounds are purported to be the
site of the first eucalyptus trees planted in Southern California.
The story of eucalyptus at the Workman Ranch is that Albert Workman
himself imported eucalyptus seedlings from his native Australia,
planting them on his ranch in the early 1870s. As local legend explains,
these trees are said to be the parents of all eucalyptus trees in
Southern California. The Workman Ranch was later renamed “Shadow
Ranch,” supposedly in tribute to the tall eucalyptus trees
planted by Albert Workman and the shadows they cast on his residence.
The main ranch house was restored in 1933, and, during the 1950s,
the complex of structures served as a private girls school, called
“Robinnaire.” Today, Workman’s residence is owned
by the City of Los Angeles, Department of Recreation and Parks,
serving as a community center and open daily to the public. The
residence was declared Cultural-Historic Monument #9 by the Los
Angeles City Council on November 2, 1962.
NOTE: Please click on the image to view
the full size of the pictures.
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