PW-FEB20-35-37-Park-Update.qxp_Feature 03/03/2020 16:05 Page 35
Park Update
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Knott’s Berry Farm: The American icon is 100
Knott’s Berry Farm’s history is as legendary in the amusement industry as New York’s Coney Island, and even its own next-door neighbor, Disneyland. Its genesis and evolution within the highly competitive amusement arena of Southern California is the stuff of which the American dream is made. Gary Kyriazi reviews Knott’s’ history and speculates on where it is headed.
Gary Kyriazi is the author of The Great American Amusement Parks, and the writer/ producer of America Screams, the first pictorial
history and television special about American amusement parks. He has been a researcher and historian on American amusement parks for 40 years.
Chicken dinners In the early 1980s, in response to the American theme park boom of the 1960s and 1970s, Knott’s Berry Farm was and still is publicising itself as “America’s oldest theme park.” That accolade was and is rather arguable, since by 1980, no one knew exactly what a “theme park” was. Walt Disney had certainly introduced and defined the concept in 1955, but its imitators, starting with Six Flags Over Texas in 1961, were often vague on their “theme.” (Becci, consider using the following 104 words as a stand-alone featured quote; it’s provocative.) Industry observers of the 1970s noted with humor that “All you need for a ‘theme park’ is to buy a Log Flume and Runaway Mine Train from Arrow, several stock rides, and name and place them into contrived themed areas, with architecture and design provided by Randall Duell and Associates.” Indeed, the theme parks all looked alike, including two sets of nearly identical chain parks, with only Disneyland standing out, above and apart from the others. So, not only is Knott’s Berry Farm being unfair to itself by calling itself the oldest theme park, that title is ignoring Knott’s’ own uniqueness and rich history. This American success story began in 1920 when Walter
Knott and his wife Cordelia opened a roadside stand at their 10-acre berry farm in the Buena Park suburb of Southern California. Eight years later, the Knotts had a Berry Market where they sold berry plants, while Cordelia served boysenberry pies in her tearoom. The Knott’s Berry Farm became a popular stop for beach-bound Los Angelenos on Route 39, and by 1934 Cordelia was also serving what became her famous chicken dinners, affording them to open a dining room on the farm, where their three daughters waited tables, while Walter kept their son busy elsewhere on the farm.
No Queues By 1940, to entertain the crowds during their long wait for dining room or takeout service, Walter Knott began building the farm up in the spirited theme of the westward movement. He added a diorama show on the wagon trains (his grandmother had come west in a such a wagon train), and built his Ghost Town with buildings brought in, board for board, from various deserted gold-rush towns throughout the west. To the Ghost Town were added the Butterfield stagecoach, the Calico Railroad Train, complete with holdups, the Haunted Shack, and a Gold Mine where guests
FEBRUARY 2020
panned for gold. Musicals in the Covered Wagon Show and cowboy stunt men rounded out the entertainment. Walter Knott displayed his American pride with a full-scale replica of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Disneyland’s 1955 opening just six miles away boosted
Knott’s Berry Farm attendance as an add-on to a visit to the Magic Kingdom. Walt Disney famously told his friend Walter Knott, “Don’t worry, there’ll be enough business for both of us.” There was. Out-of-town visitors always spent their first day at Disneyland, and the next day they went to Knott’s Berry Farm (Marineland Of The Pacific, which had opened in 1954, came in at a respectable third place). Although Disneyland at that time had just a fraction of today’s attractions, it was still a very busy day for families, so parents and even their children appreciated the next day’s relaxation at “The Farm,” with no queues to stand in. In 1957, Knott’s Berry Farm garnered worldwide publicity with its lengthy appearance in the Elvis Presley hit film, “Jailhouse Rock.”
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