Most folks know of the area called Ellwood. It’s used in conversation and directions, it even shows up on maps, but do you know why is it called that?

There’s an Ellwood Oil field, Ellwood Canyon, Ellwood Station Road, Ellwood Beach Drive, and of course, Ellwood School. So who the heck is Ellwood?

Ellwood is none other than Ellwood Cooper.

Born in a Quaker area of Pennsylvania in 1829, he worked on his father’s farm and married a young lady who lived nearby named Sarah Moore.

Ellwood left the farm and got a job in Philadelphia at a “free labor store” that sold only products that were made without using any slave labor, but he had aspirations to see the world.

So he took a job in the shipping business that took him and his young wife to Haiti where they lived for 10 years, had two children, and survived political turmoil and revolution.

In 1865, the Cooper family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he continued his business in the shipping industry.

In 1870, Ellwood bought 2,000 acres from the Den family at $22 an acre on the recommendation of his good friend, W.W. Hollister.

Ellwood was enthusiastic about his new home, writing to relatives on the East Coast: “This is the Italy of America, the paradise of the western world, the climatic perfection of this globe!”

He was thrilled about the rich soil and had big plans for his new ranch, which became Ellwood Ranch.

Ellwood planted 400 acres of trees, including 7,000 olive trees; 4,000 Japanese persimmons; 3,000 almond trees; 1,000 other assorted fruit trees; and 12,500 walnut trees, making him the largest walnut grower in California for several years.

Ellwood also had a herd of 150 Jersey cattle that supplied butter to Santa Barbara and San Francisco.

But olive trees were his top priority. He was convinced Goleta olive oil could compete with Italian oil. He built the largest olive mill in the United States, and it brought worldwide publicity to his ranch.

Despite all the attention and Cooper’s notoriety as America’s “Olive Oil King,” the business was a failure. He just could not compete with the much cheaper oil from Sicily. In fact, his most lucrative crop were Japanese persimmons, growing quietly two miles up the canyon.

Even though it failed, the memory of Ellwood’s olive oil industry lives on today, thanks to lucky folks occasionally finding remnants of Ellwood Olive Oil bottles on Goleta beaches.

Ellwood Ranch was a very popular tourist attraction, bringing celebrities and world leaders out on the “splendid” 14-mile road from Santa Barbara to see the ranch and gardens. Renowned artists would come out to paint beautiful scenes of the ranch.

Ellwood’s children served as tour guides and led the visitors through the working ranch than ran “from the low water mark of the Pacific Ocean back to the highest elevation of the sloping hills.”

One of the tourist favorites was the “House Garden,” four acres that held about 1,000 types of plants and cared for entirely by Mrs. Cooper.

Some things Ellwood planted are still with us today, like The Ellwood Queen, a prime specimen of a lemon-scented gum tree. He planted it in 1887 on his gorgeous ranch in western Goleta, and it has been featured in national magazines throughout the years.

Today, it is the largest of its kind in California and it is still standing tall just inside the Goleta city limits near the Winchester Canyon. The Ellwood Queen is listed on the California Big Tree Registry as a national champion.

Ellwood was known for some other projects that still exist today.  He became convinced that Blue Gum Eucalyptus trees could be a reliable lumber source that grew well in our climate. He imported them from Australia and planted a thick grove where Ellwood School is today.

He wasn’t the first in California to plant eucalyptus, but he was the first to grow them on a large scale for the market. He sold them all over central and southern California, and they were popular for use as windbreaks to protect other crops. Many can still be seen in use today.

Unfortunately, they rotted in salt water and underground, making them useless as pier pilings or telegraph poles. Additionally, it couldn’t be milled into lumber because of its coarse grains and when it was dry it was very difficult to saw or split. So, the eucalyptus trees only real value was as a windbreak.

Today the Ellwood eucalyptus grove’s most popular value is providing a temporary home for migrating Monarch butterflies and it is visited by as many as 1,000 people per weekend during the butterfly season.

Yet another one of Ellwood’s accomplishments was saving California’s walnut industry from extinction. He learned that ladybugs ate the black scale that was destroying the crops, and he imported thousands of them from China.

In a matter of weeks, the scale was eradicated, and Cooper was a hero. To honor him, he was elected the president of the State Board of Horticulture for many years.

Ellwood was the author of several books and numerous magazine, encyclopedia and newspaper articles on many topics, including politics and horticulture.

Despite all of his achievements, he and his family lived in this modest house on his ranch for almost all of his life.

He was a fun-loving man and he spent a lot of his spare time on his private stretch of seashore, from present day Sandpiper Golf Course to Sands Beach. A fine stretch indeed.

In 1909, Ellwood’s loving wife passed away, and he became sad and lonely. This prompted him to sell the ranch and move to the Arlington Hotel in Santa Barbara. He passed away at the Arlington in 1918, and was laid to rest at the Goleta Cemetery, near San Marcos High School.

In 1921, Ellwood’s precious ranch was auctioned off and, luckily, the hardworking Doty family bought the ranch and kept it going as a Goleta farm for decades. They still own some of it, and Ellwood’s barn and a worker’s house are still standing to this day.

Thankfully, much of Ellwood’s coastal property has been preserved and is today called the Ellwood Open Space and Sperling Preserve. It is a popular location for scenic blufftop walks and butterfly viewing in the eucalyptus forest. It’s known to locals as the Ellwood Mesa.

So the next time you drive through the area we call Ellwood, remember the man that it’s named for, a man who loved Goleta and loved planting trees, Ellwood Cooper.