Woodward Park. Woodward School. Woodward Avenue. Woodward Reservoir. Just who is this Woodward who has so many things named after him in the Manteca area? Walter Woodward is considered among the top 12 prominent pioneers in Manteca history. Woodward was Manteca’s first real estate agent and an early advocate of irrigation. His irrigation advocacy helped change the South San Joaquin County landscape as well as the economy. Born in Vermont in 1858, Woodward’s embracing of the economic value of irrigation was gleaned on stops on his way to eventually moving to Manteca in 1905. … His company was hired to lay the first pipe system to move water from the Colorado River to Los Angeles by crossing the Mojave Desert. It was during the laying of that pipe that Woodward invented and obtained the patent on a molded redwood plume used to carry water over steep desert terrain.