It’s a long way from Hanford to Disneyland. But the theme park that’s known worldwide actually owes part of its success to a young man from the valley. His story – today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots.
Back in 1954 Albert Dorman was just 28 years-old when he set up a one-man civil engineering firm in Hanford. He made a living doing jobs for cities like Corcoran and Lemoore, which were too small to have their own city engineer on staff.
Then Dorman got the job of a lifetime, when Walt Disney hired him to help transform an Anaheim orange grove into Disneyland.
Dorman didn’t design the park, but he designed the systems that made it work. From the park’s roads and berms and lakes to attractions like the Mark Twain riverboat, Dorman helped bring Walt Disney’s vision to life. And it’s Dorman’s stamp and signature you’ll see on Disneyland’s original blueprints as the park’s civil engineer of record.
In a 2018 interview with his alma mater USC, Dorman said the riverboat was quote “a frightening thing for me to work on because paddlewheel steamboats hadn’t been built in the U.S. for many years, and nobody had ever designed a paddlewheel boat that rode on a rail.”
Dorman said the race to finish Disneyland was so intense, he couldn’t bear to set foot in the park for 10 years after it opened.
Dorman went on to grow his firm in Hanford, ultimately becoming the founding CEO of AECOM, which today is one of the largest world’s largest architecture and engineering firms. Dorman passed away in 2023, but his contributions to Disneyland live on, 70 years later.
