Shadow Ranch | |
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Location | 22633 Vanowen Street, West Hills, Los Angeles, California |
Coordinates | 34°11′40″N118°37′12″W / 34.1945°N 118.6199°W Coordinates: 34°11′40″N118°37′12″W / 34.1945°N 118.6199°W |
Built | 1869-1872 |
Governing body | City of Los Angeles Dept. of Recreation & Parks |
Designated | November 2, 1962 [1] |
Reference no. | 9 |
Shadow Ranch is a historic ranch house, built from 1869-1872 using adobe and redwood lumber, on the original Workman Ranch in the western San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California. For much of the 20th century it was in Canoga Park, but it is now within the boundaries of the West Hills community.
The ranch began as a dry-land wheat farm owned by the San Fernando Homestead Association led by Isaac Lankershim and Isaac Van Nuys. Albert Workman, an Australian immigrant, began as the superintendent of Van Nuys' Los Angeles Farm and Milling Company. After 1869 Workman purchased the 9,000-acre (36 km2) ranch, and cultivated it with another 4,000 acres (16 km2) nearby. The ranch also had a thousand head of cattle at one time. [2] Workman imported Australian Blue Gum eucalyptus tree seeds from his homeland and planted them on the ranch. Some claim the numerous eucalyptus trees in California of that species, Eucalyptus globulus , originate from the Workman Ranch groves.
The site has multiple Hollywood connections. In the 1930s the Workman Ranch was acquired by Colin Clements and Florence Ryerson, a couple who were screenwriters for the film studio. Ryerson co-wrote the screenplay for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz while living there. She renamed the estate Shadow Ranch for the amount of shade provided by the numerous large eucalyptus trees, originally planted during the Workman era.
It was acquired in 1948 by another screenwriter, Ranald MacDougall, whose credits include "Mildred Pierce" and "Cleopatra." In 1961, film director William Wyler used the ranch house as a filming location for The Children’s Hour , based on the play by Lillian Hellman. [3] [4]
Today, the historic Shadow Ranch residence stands on a 13 acres (53,000 m2) parcel; the remaining undeveloped land of the original ranch is now an L.A. city park. The structure is used as a recreational facility and events venue. When the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission was formed in 1962, Shadow Ranch was one of the first ten properties to be designated as a city Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM #9).
Canoga Park is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles, California. Before the Mexican–American War, the district was part of a rancho, and after the American victory it was converted into wheat farms and then subdivided, with part of it named Owensmouth as a town founded in 1912. It joined Los Angeles in 1917 and was renamed Canoga Park on March 1, 1931, after Canoga, New York.
The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, California. Situated to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it contains a large portion of the City of Los Angeles, as well as unincorporated areas and the incorporated cities of Burbank, Calabasas, Glendale, Hidden Hills, and San Fernando. The valley is well known for its iconic film studios such as Warner Bros. Studio and Walt Disney Studios. In addition, it is home to the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park.
Chatsworth is a suburban neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles, California, in the San Fernando Valley.
West Hills is a suburban / residential community in the western San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles, California. The percentage of residents aged 35 and older is among the highest in Los Angeles County.
The Campo de Cahuenga, near the historic Cahuenga Pass in present-day Studio City, California, was an adobe ranch house on the Rancho Cahuenga where the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed between Lieutenant Colonel John C. Frémont and General Andrés Pico in 1847, ending hostilities in California between Mexico and the United States. The subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, ceding California, parts of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona to the United States, formally ended the Mexican–American War. From 1858 to 1861 the Campo de Cahuenga became a Butterfield Stage Station.
Isaac Newton Van Nuys was an American businessman, farmer and rancher who owned the entire southern portion of the San Fernando Valley—an area 15 miles long and 6 miles wide. With the approach of the Owens River aqueduct, and the possibility of intensive small farming, Los Angeles speculators, including Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, combined to buy out Van Nuys in 1909 and develop the San Fernando Valley.
Rancho Los Encinos was a Spanish grazing concession, and later Mexican land granted cattle and sheep rancho and travelers way-station on the El Camino Real in the San Fernando Valley, in present-day Encino, Los Angeles County, California. The original 19th-century adobe and limestone structures and natural warm springs are now within the Los Encinos State Historic Park.
Rómulo Pico Adobe, also known as Ranchito Rómulo and Andrés Pico Adobe, was built in 1834 and is the oldest residence in the San Fernando Valley, making it the second oldest residence in Los Angeles. Built and owned by the Pico family of California, a prominent Californio family, the adobe is located in the Mission Hills section of the city and is a short distance from the San Fernando Mission. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
The Minnie Hill Palmer House, also known as The Homestead Acre, is the only remaining homestead cottage in the San Fernando Valley. The cottage is a redwood Stick-Eastlake style American Craftsman-Bungalow located on a 1.3-acre (0.53 ha) site in Chatsworth Park South in the Chatsworth section of Los Angeles, California.
The Orcutt Ranch Horticulture Center, formally known as Rancho Sombra del Roble, is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument located in the West Hills section of Los Angeles, California, USA.
San Fernando Pioneer Memorial Cemetery, earlier known as Morningside Cemetery, is a cemetery in the Sylmar district of Los Angeles. Located on a 3.8-acre site at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Bledsoe Street, the Pioneer Cemetery was thought to be originally a 40-acre or 10-acre site.
The history of the San Fernando Valley from its exploration by the 1769 Portola expedition to the annexation of much of it by the City of Los Angeles in 1915 is a story of booms and busts, as cattle ranching, sheep ranching, large-scale wheat farming, and fruit orchards flourished and faded. Throughout its history, settlement in the San Fernando Valley was shaped by availability of reliable water supplies and by proximity to the major transportation routes through the surrounding mountains.
Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando was a 116,858-acre (472.91 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Los Angeles County, California, granted in 1846 by Governor Pío Pico to Eulogio F. de Celis. The grant derives its name from the secularized Mission San Fernando Rey de España, but was called ex-Mission because of a division made of the lands held in the name of the mission—the church retaining the grounds immediately around, and all of the lands outside of this were called ex-Mission lands. The grant encompassed most of the present-day San Fernando Valley.
Florence Ryerson was an American playwright, screenwriter, and co-author of the script for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Between 1915 and 1927 she published more than 30 short stories and then joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1926 to work on silent film scripts. In 1930 and 1933 she and her husband wrote two of the earliest novels about the teenage years for girls. The novels were based on a short story series Ryerson had started in 1925. She continued to write for most of her life, writing plays for Broadway in the 1940s.
Isaac Lankershim was a German-born American landowner and pioneer in California. He was the owner of 60,000 acres in Los Angeles County, California.
The Chatsworth Nature Preserve (CNP) is a 1,325-acre (536 ha) open-space preserve located in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California, United States. The preserve contains oak woodlands, savanna, riparian areas, grassland, vernal pools, and an Ecology Pond, all of which support more than 200 bird species and numerous mammals, amphibians and reptiles.
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