Eugene Preston "E.P." Foster was a pioneer and philanthropist in Ventura County. His parents were Isaac and Roxanna (Cheney) Foster. His father and grandfather had come to California as part of the Gold Rush of 1849; three years later they brought their family to California, including young Eugene Preston Foster, then only four years old. His siblings were: Lucy, Fred and Frank. The family initially settled in San Jose and Half Moon Bay in northern California. They later moved to Santa Barbara where his sister Lucy married Joseph Sexton, a nurseryman. Eugene would later use many of the plants he learned about from his brother-in-law to beautify areas in Ventura county. The most readily visible remnant of E.P. Foster's planting legacy is "Two Trees" overlooking Ventura which was originally an orchard of eucalyptus trees. He was an industrious young man. He purchased land in the Santa Clara Valley, and went into the sheep business "on the Conejo", becoming a ranch superintendant to H.W. Mills. He married Orpha Woods in 1874, and started a family. His daughter Orpha W. Foster was perhaps the first child born born on the Conejo. He suffered a dramatic reversal of fortune with the draught 1876/1877, losing both his land and livestock. He picked himself and dusted himself off and ventured to Ventura where he became a ditchtender for the Santa Ana Water Co., while his wife kept the company's books. Working long hours, he re-built his life. He bought a tract of land on "the Avenue" in Ventura where he built his home in 1881. He began an apricot nursery near his home and did so well with the enterprise that he later traded much of his land for 10,000 worth of Bank of Ventura which was later sold to the Bank of Italy (now known as Bank of America). He later worked as a clerk at the bank and by 1890 was the president of the Bank of Ventura.

E.P. and his wife Orpha loved trees, picnics and the great outdoors. They initiated the idea of a county park system in 1904. The 205 acre Foster Park was established in 1908; a concrete amphitheater was built in 1928. In 1909, Mr. Foster and his wife Orpha (Woods) Foster, granted the land, then known as Ventura County Seaside Park, to the county of Ventura. The E.P. Foster Library, still in use on Main Street in Ventura, was dedicated September 5, 1921. His wife Orpha bore ten children, many of them not surviving childhood. When he died in 1932, he left an incredible philanthropic legacy of outdoor venues and parks , a library, the land where the old Ventura City Hall is located, and the Foster Memorial Hospital (now known as Community Memorial Hospital).

The headline of the Ventura Weekly Post on February 12, 1932 read in bold letters: E.P. FOSTER DIES TODAY. He had been ill for a few weeks, and died at his beloved home on Ventura Avenue of a heart attack. He was survived by his widow, Orpha Foster; his daughters, Miss Orpha Pearl Foster; Mrs. Ida Baker; Mrs Edith Mercer (all of Ventura) and Mrs. Steve (Grace) Percy (of Los Angeles)

Final note, Eugene Preston Foster's ancestry can be traced back to "Anarcher, Great Forester of Flanders, 837A.D.)"--------perhaps the love of plants and the great outdoors was in his DNA.

(Some information about the life of E.P. Foster derived from a memoir by Mildred Ranger Schofield and information from a booklet entitled "E.P. Foster and Family" at the E.P. Foster Library written by a gentleman named R. Gird Percy who knew Mr. Foster from the time he (Mr. Percy) was a child.