Category: Knotts Berry Farm

The park sits on the site of a former berry farm established by Walter Knott and his family. Beginning in 1923, the Knott family sold berries, berry preserves, and pies from a roadside stand along State Route 39. In June 1934, the Knotts began selling fried chicken dinners in a tea room on the property, later named “Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant. The dinners soon became a major tourist draw, and the Knotts built several shops and other attractions to entertain visitors waiting for a seat in the restaurant. In 1940, Walter Knott began constructing a replica Ghost Town on the property, the beginning of the present-day theme park. Ghost Town was Walter Knott’s tribute to the pioneers, which included his own grandparents who came to California in a covered wagon from Texas in 1868 (when his mother was about four years old). The idea of an amusement park picked up in the 1950s when Walter Knott opened a “summer-long county fair.”