Knott’s Berry Farm
Walter and Cordelia Knott moved to Buena Park in 1920 to farm 20 acres of rented land. In 1928, the first permanent building housed Cordelia’s tea room and berry market. The farm was christened Knott’s Berry Place. In 1932, Anaheim Parks Superintendent Rudolph Boysen gave Walter several scraggly plants of a new strain of berry, a cross between a loganberry, red raspberry and blackberry, that Knott revived and dubbed the boysenberry. Cordelia began selling fried chicken dinners in 1934. By 1940 the restaurant was serving up to 4,000 of them on Sunday evenings. To give waiting customers something to do, Walter developed Ghost Town, eventually the first of Knott’s Berry Farm’s six themed areas. The first structure was the Gold Trails Hotel, which had originally been constructed in Prescott, AZ in 1868.
Buena Park, Orange County
Images by Andrew Schmidt