Eucalyptus Trees Are Rancher’s Legacy

Logging and wheat enterprises made Albert Workman a rich man, but it was because of a small grove of eucalyptus trees that the Australian immigrant’s name remains part of Valley lore.

Workman, whose redwood and brick home is now the centerpiece of Shadow Ranch Park in West Hills, planted what some say were the first eucalyptus trees in Southern California on the West Valley ranch that bore his name.

After emigrating from Australia, Workman worked as a mule driver and built his fortune as an overland freighter, hauling logs into Los Angeles.

In the late 1860s, Workman went to work for the Los Angeles Farm & Milling Co., managing a 13,000-acre ranch that was originally part of the holdings of Isaac B. Lankershim and his son-in-law, Isaac N. Van Nuys, founders of the San Fernando Valley Homestead Assn.

Within a few years, Workman bought the ranch and built one of the largest homes in the area. He surrounded the home with eucalyptus seedlings that he imported from Australia.

“He built the house to impress his girlfriend so she would marry him, and she did,” said Pat Watkins, who has worked at Shadow Ranch Park for 16 years. “He planted the eucalyptus trees on his wedding day.”

Only two of Workman’s original trees remain--two others were toppled in wind storms earlier this year--but the seedlings he planted are believed to be the parent trees of most of the eucalyptus presently growing in Southern California.

Workman lived with his family at the ranch until 1900, when he sold the property.

Over the years since, the home that Workman built served as a boarding house for men working at nearby Hughes Aircraft, a private girls school and the residence of Colin and Florence Clements, screenwriters for “Gone With the Wind.”

The city purchased the 11-acre property in 1957. The house was declared a historical/cultural monument in 1962, and the park was dedicated by the city in 1963.

The house was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and although the city has designated $1.5 million in Proposition K funds to restore it, officials say work will not begin until 1998 at the earliest.