Walter and Cordelia Knott

This past March my wife and I along with our three children and counting celebrated our first wedding anniversary at Knott’s Berry Farm. It’s close to home, they have a wonderful hotel and park ticket package and most important to me it gave us the opportunity to enjoy the legacy of Walter and Cordelia Knott.

This was our second family trip to Knott’s and let me tell you, I was no less happy there than I would have been at any of the other well-known theme parks in Southern California. Having been our second trip, we were able to plan a little better than we did the previous year. The only real difficult part was making sure we enjoyed ourselves as much as we did the first time around. Rather than spend Sunday and Monday inside the park, we chose to check in to the hotel early Sunday afternoon and take in the sights outside the park that didn’t require admission. This was done for many reasons; weekday crowds are always smaller than the weekend crowds and we gained an extra three hours inside on Monday, which we would not have had if we went inside on Sunday.

After checking in to the hotel we made our way to the Marketplace. Knott’s California Marketplace is a collection of shops and restaurants just outside the main gate and within easy walking distance of the park. I had explained to my sons that they would be able to choose any souvenirs and goodies they wanted with one stipulation; if it was theirs, they carried it. No exceptions. Visiting the Marketplace enabled us to get our fill of souvenirs before we went into the park the next day. This prevented us from being bogged down with extra cargo while we enjoyed the attractions.

One thing I really looked forward to was Independence Hall; a brick by brick replica of the original in Philadelphia complete with a replica of the Liberty Bell. It was a quiet afternoon, we were the only souls in the building aside from the two employees manning the souvenir stand located in the Supreme Court room. The afternoon wore on and we were all getting so we walked through the pedestrian tunnel under Beach Blvd and headed over to Pink’s Hot Dogs. The original Pink’s is located in Hollywood and the Knott’s version carried the same star-studded menu. I read the menu online nearly every night for the previous week yet still I was unable to make a final decision when I got to the counter. I settled for the Chicago dog and if anyone has had a good Chicago dog before, let me tell you the one at Pink’s is the real deal.

I was running on three hours of sleep and only eight since the previous Friday but I was not tired in any way. Besides I get plenty of sleep at home and at home I don’t have world class hot dogs, souvenir shopping and Mrs. Knott’s Fried Chicken at home. After a short rest at the hotel we journeyed again to the Marketplace, stocking up on toys, clothing and bottles of concentrated boysenberry punch. A pleasant surprise awaited us the Berry Market section of the building; one of the oldest Knott’s attractions that predated even the venerable Ghost Town. As Walter Knott scrambled for ways to entertain guests during the hours-long waits for Cordelia’s fried chicken, two of the first attractions he added were an exact replica of George Washingtons’ hearth at Mount Vernon along with a rock-garden waterfall and an antique millstone. What a joy it was to discover them while searching for the restroom! I had read about the attractions following our first trip but I was under the assumption they were tucked away in employee-only areas of the property.

It was a joyful yet solemn moment; those attractions had stood for over seventy years and aside from the updated lighting it was just as Mr. Knott had made it.

Even though we were still a little full from our afternoon hot dog and chili feast, we kept up with the “we can’t get that at home” way of thinking and picked up a bucket of Knott’s fried chicken and fresh baked biscuits our the way back to the hotel. We made it through the first day without succumbing to my temptation to buy extra tickets and head into the park a day early.

Some of my past blogs have talked about why my family is so endeared to Knott’s and that second trip, combined with the history I learned made the feeling that much deeper.

Walter Knott was born in 1889 to a family whose roots were brought west in a covered wagon. His grandmother made the trip across the Mojave Desert at three years of age. At 16 Walter met Cordelia Hornaday and after a two year courtship they were married, Cordelia settling in as a housewife and Walter taking a well-paying job as a supervisor for a concrete company. Walter could have likely made a comfortable living and even retired from the construction job but he knew that it wasn’t his calling. Since childhood Walter tended his own gardens and sold the rewards to neighbors in an effort to help with the family finances. His heart was with the land; Walter wanted to farm and unbeknownst to him, that desire would make the Knott name known worldwide.

Before that could happen, Walter and Cordelia decided to leave their relatively comfortable life in Pomona for the hardship and uncertainty of farming in the Mojave Desert. Walter looked forward to the prospect of owning his own farmland, while Cordelia didn’t share his enthusiasm. As the story goes, Mrs. Knott burst into tears when she saw the one-room adobe that was to be their home.

Undaunted, Walter made the best of their new home near the town of Newberry Springs. The average temperature in the summertime is over 100 degrees and while the ample sunshine is vital to a good crop, lack of water in the desert made it very difficult to succeed. In researching the Knott family story I found it very coincidental that a “New” berry would be a catalyst to Mr. and Mrs. Knott’s success.

After three years of trying to eke out a living in the harsh desert landscape Walter received an opportunity to return to Orange County. His cousin Jim Preston invited him to partner in a tenant-farmer deal in Buena Park. Starting off with strawberries, raspberries’ and later adding asparagus and rhubarb, Walter and his cousin were barely scraping by. After a year, Jim was ready to call it quits. If he left Walter would be out of a job, as Jim held the farming rights to the land. Walter approached the landowner himself, inquiring about purchasing the land outright. Walter met great difficulty in securing a loan; the Great Depression was on and no bank would touch him. In spite of the economic hardships, Walter was determined to make the farm work. After having secured the necessary loans and convincing the landowner to sell at a below-market price, Walter now held the deed to the land that was to become America’s first theme park.

In spite of Walter’s green thumb and Cordelias’ undying support the berry business was middling at best. An old friend of Walters tipped him off to a hybrid berry plant created by Rudolph Boysen. Walter tracked down the remaining berry plants in nearby Anaheim and soon had a thriving spread of the plants. In 1928 he opened Knott’s Berry Place, a simple wooden shack to sell his products. Cordelia began to make jellies and jams with biscuits, light sandwiches and punch to wash it all down. When asked what the berries were called, Walter replied “Boysen created them, so we should call them Boysenberries.” This was a shock to some, as most men would have put their own name on the new berry product. But Walter Knott was a very special breed of man, he chose to give credit where credit was due. Within a few years, Boysens’s berries were the most popular berry in the United States and every boysenberry in the world today came from those six withering plants Walter found over 80 years ago.

The Depression continued to strain the financial situations of families across the land and the Knott’s weren’t immune. Despite the popularity of the Berry Stand Walter and Cordelia weren’t turning a profit. Undaunted, they built a “tea room” to give more of a homey feel to the business. Cordelia added sandwiches to the menu, along with her immediately famous boysenberry pies. They say in business the three most important things are location, location and location. This was true for the Knotts’ as the Los Angeles elite used California State Highway 39 (now known as Beach Blvd) as the main route to their summer homes on the beaches of Orange County. Soon, visitors from all over made Knott’s a destination instead of just a stop along the way. With the influx of guests, Mrs. Knott decided to cook up some of her family recipe fried chicken; serving it to eight people on her own wedding china.

Cordelia continued to serve her chicken to supplement the family income, insisting the whole while “I am not in the restaurant business.” Within weeks, word spread like wildfire about the fried chicken being served up at Knott’s Berry Place; averaging one thousand meals served per day, with four thousand on Sundays and a total of over a quarter million meals served during that first year. Like it or not, Cordeila Knott was definitely in the restaurant business. The average wait to sit at one of Knott’s tables went into several hours and this is when Walter started adding attractions to keep his guests entertained. The first was a mock volcano that came to be as much out of necessity as desire. An old vent pipe stuck eight feet out of the ground and since it could not be removed, Walter piled up lava rocks trucked in from Death Valley and had his volcano.

I thought of this when I admired the handiwork of the Washington hearth along with the millstone and rock garden. The Knott legacy was right in front of me and as I said, it was a serene; almost solemn moment. Knott’s is now an internationally-known brand but when I stood admiring those attractions I was taken back to the 1930’s. Later in the evening I made a third trip to the Marketplace. While my family and I shopped at Snoopy World Headquarters earlier in the evening I spotted a rain coat that I really wanted. I had the money to spare but when my oldest son and I went to check it out, I found they didn’t have my size. It was for the better, it was a nice jacket but I knew the money would have been better spent elsewhere. The later-evening walk to the Marketplace has become something of a tradition for Trevor and I. Not only does it give us some great father-son bonding time, something that is cherished by a dad who works five nights a week. It also gives me an excuse to check out the Knott legacy, something I never tire of doing.

Every time I walk by the Chicken Dinner Restaurant, I visualize the photos I’ve seen from when it was one of the only buildings in the area. There was a time where there were as many horses parked out front as there were cars. As Trevor and I walked back towards the hotel we spoke excitedly about our plans for the next day. He said “We better make sure we get you and Jojo one of those turkey legs”, as my youngest son asked earlier if we could get “one of those big barbecue chicken legs”. I thought of Knott’s Ghost Town, built in the years around World War Two. Walter often traveled throughout the west in search of ghost towns. His idea was to build a Ghost Town of his own; complete with actors portraying the characters one would expect to see in a typical Old West town. Some of the buildings in Knott’s Ghost Town attraction were new, built by Knott employees and intentionally weathered to look old. Walter also traveled to Arizona and purchased entire buildings, had them dismantled, shipped to Buena Park and reassembled in the newly named Knott’s Berry Farm. Walter and Cordelia didn’t stop with in Arizona; some of the buildings came from as far away as Oregon and the venerable Ghost Town Schoolhouse was shipped from Kansas and placed next to the Birdcage Theater, an exact replica of the famous theater in Tombstone.

When my family and I visit a well-known attraction I am often in envy of its employees. How lucky and blessed they are to work in a place where fun is the main commodity! At Knott’s I thought of the employees who worked directly under Walter and Cordelia themselves. One year Walter decided to give out twenty thousand dollars in profits to employees as bonuses in addition to their standard pay. When told that he was crazy to do such a thing, Walter shrugged it off knowing that the loyalty he showed was far more important to the bottom line than money. This continued until after Mr. Knott passed away; with a grand total of over five million dollars given right back to employees. That’s over twenty million dollars in today’s numbers.

Near the Independence Hall building there is a Golden Rain Tree planted by the Knott employees. Near the tree sits a bronze plaque dedicated to the Knott Family. This plaque was paid for and installed by employees in appreciation of dedication the Knott Family showed to them over the years. Of all the dedication the employees showed to the Farm, the Knott family returned it tenfold. One afternoon, a waitress from the Chicken Dinner restaurant was overheard talking about her inability to buy a dress for her daughter on her salary as a single mother. Mrs. Knott learned of this and promptly went into her sewing room and made a dress herself; presenting it to the young mother after dinner at the Knott family table.

Such things are on my mind when I walk through the park and outlying properties. When the park opened for business on that cool Monday morning we made a beeline to the Log Ride. Since it was closed for renovations when we made our first family trip last year, I had not ridden it since 1986 and more than anything I wanted to share the experience with my family. The ride itself was designed and built by Bud Hurlbut, the master designer and builder who cast the Liberty Bell replica and created the world’s first “dark ride” in 1960; the Calico Mine Ride. When Mr. Knott expressed his concerns for the feasibility of such an endeavor, he asked Bud “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Mr. Hurlbut replied that he was indeed certain of the ride’s success and was later quoted as saying “And that’s the first and last time I lied to Walter Knott.” A theme park standard these days is the hidden queue, a design feature that Bud Hurlbut gave birth to with the Calico Mine Ride. The Log Ride followed in 1969 and while it wasn’t the first log flume-themed ride in the country, it was the first to add animatronic figures and accurate reproductions. Riders were immersed in the world of an 1890’s Northern California logging camp; the first of which were legendary actor John Wayne and his son Ethan. Knott’s was now an official theme park, as Walter reluctantly decided to fence off the entire property, giving the Knott’s the ability to charge admission for the first time.

After two consecutive trips on the Log Ride we walked over to Knott’s other window to the past, the famous Ghost Town. Ghost town is a window in two ways; one being that many of the original buildings still stand and two because they continue to pay the tribute to the pioneer spirit that Mr. Knott intended. We filled our cups with ice-cold boysenberry punch and settled in to a lunch of smoked turkey legs for us boys and a pile of gourmet fries for the Mrs. I think my one year old daughter Layla got the best of the deal. Too young for a plate of her own, we each shared a bit of our meals with her, giving her the best of both worlds. We also shopped in the Bottle House, a small building made of thousands of whiskey bottles. Now a gift shop filled with Native American crafts, the Bottle House is one of the original Ghost Town buildings. Again I was transported back with thoughts of the old photos I saw.

At the end of our first day we resisted having a fried chicken dinner for the second night in a row; opting for a light dinner of appetizers at the hotel’s Amber Waves restaurant. We planned on taking some chicken home the next day and didn’t want to burn ourselves out on it. It was an early night for all five of us; my usual 4am bedtime was beaten by nearly four hours. This came only after skimmed through two new (to me) books on Knott’s history; both of which contributed largely to this travel/history piece. I looked over airborne images of the park over the years and compared them to the Google Earth images on my laptop. I was saddened to see Ghost Town and the two major Hurlbut-built rides were among the only remaining features from the days when both Mr. and Mrs. Knott lived on their “Farm”. Just under the tracks of the Pony Express ride there are remnants of the original Ghost Town desert. Mr. Knott’s Church of Reflections is now across the street, near Independence Hall. It is generally closed to the public but they still hold an Easter Sunrise service every year. That is definitely something on my bucket list.

We often try to visit major attractions on weekdays, I’ve never been partial to large crowds aside from baseball games and rock concerts. During our early-week visit to Knott's the lines for most rides were non-existent. On our second day rather than ask one another “What do you want to do today” we were able to ask “What do you want to do again today?” One of the only rides we missed that first day was the Butterfield Stagecoach ride, due to it being closed by the time we made the effort to ride it. In keeping with a promise I made to my son Joseph; we headed straight to the depot as soon as we walked in the gates, stopping only for some candid shots with Snoopy, Linus and Charlie Brown. Trevor and I wished to ride on top of the coach while my wife rode inside with Joseph and Layla. It was our longest wait of the entire vacation and came about only as a result of our differing seating requests.

I rode many of the thrill rides that day, my favorite of the newer attractions was the Supreme Scream, a lift device that takes you over two hundred feet in the air and drops you so fast you can experience a few seconds of weightlessness. I wasn’t in it so much for the thrill as I was the view. On my first journey upward I was able to see the Santa Monica Mountains and were it not for the haze I am certain I would caught a glimpse of the world-famous Hollywood Sign. As much as a thrill that first trip up was the second was more endearing. I was treated to a birds-eye view of the entire park and my shadow graced the tops of Timber Mountain. Many people fear getting stuck on a ride like that but I secretly hoped I would get stuck, I would not have minded getting extra time with that view one bit. Alas I had to come back down to earth, at least literally.

We still had more than half a day remaining and I set to trying to win some stuffed animals for the two lovely ladies in my life. No such luck with the carnival games but that didn’t damper our spirits. To be honest, only two things put a damper on our trip; one being that it had to come to the inevitable end and the other was knowing my children would never know the Knott’s Bear-y Tales ride. As a sixth-grade boy I was enchanted by it and I knew my little ones would have been as well. As for me, the most enchanting physical part of Knott’s is and always has been Ghost Town; where we had our last meal of the trip. The astounding success of Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant led Walter Knott to build two more eating establishments to accommodate those who may have not had the time to bear the three-plus hour waits.

Ghost Town Grill was one of these and the view out its windows are yet another step back in time. Many families develop what I like to call “Instant Traditions”; something they do once and it immediately becomes a yearly thing. One of our many Instant Traditions born at Knott’s is having our final in-park meal at the Grill. Even though it was only our second trip we didn’t need to see a menu; my wife opted for the buffalo chicken salad that she fell in love with on our honeymoon and I opted for the smoked brisket sandwich with the special request that it be served on sourdough. I don’t know if I opted for it because I simply like the bread or because I think of sourdough bread as a staple of Old West and pioneer life but either way it was a fitting meal to end our day with.

As I paid the bill and tipped our waitress I felt that familiar lump in my throat beginning to grow. We walked slower than usual to the exits, trying to soak up the last bits of enjoyment. On our way to the car we took one last stroll through the Marketplace; stocking up on concentrated boysenberry punch and a twenty two piece bucket of chicken with biscuits. A last-minute decision added a fresh baked boysenberry pie in our bags; weighing them down almost as heavy as my heart was during those final minutes in what was once known as “Knott’s Berry Place”. I have never been much of a pie person but going to Knott’s and not having at least one slice is akin to visiting Philadelphia and not having a cheesesteak. It just seems wrong not to do it.

The lump in my throat grew larger as we browsed our way through the MarketPlace Emporium one last time and looked over the “A Christmas Story” ornaments that my dear departed Mom would have absolutely adored. Even though she and I never had the opportunity to enjoy Knott’s together that moment along with the moment I spotted the reddish orange tines of the firestick plants at the old mine attraction next to the Ghost Rider wooden roller coaster felt as if she were there with me; much as being in Ghost Town, with its buildings from near where my grandfather was born made me feel as if he was there also.

I walked a few steps ahead of my family as we crossed under the Ghost Rider; I wasn’t sure how to explain the tears in Daddy’s eyes to my children. A few steps later we were walking through the parking lot towards the rear entrance of the Knott’s Hotel. As he was the night before; Snoopy stood with open arms to greet us. A smile came to my face and more than a few tears fell as I softly whispered four words I had spoken dozens of times over the past three days:

“Thank You Mr. Knott”