St. Boniface Church sesquicentennial

Today I'm taking another break from the Knott series to talk about the sesquicentennial (150 years) of St. Boniface Catholic Church in Anaheim. They kicked off their year-long celebration last weekend with an all-too-brief, but outstanding, historical exhibit.
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The photo above shows their second church, built in 1879. The photo was taken after 1891, after the building was moved to Harbor and Chartres. The photo below shows their third church, which was built in 1902 and torn down in 1964.

Stephanie George and Carlota Haider created the exhibit. Stephanie writes, "It’s difficult to determine the date on which the first Mass was said in the burgeoning town, although sometime after 1865 seems likely. Traveling priests from San Gabriel Mission and the Plaza Church in Los Angeles frequented the area for sacraments and by 1869, the Catholic community had built a small church on a lot deeded to them from the Anaheim Water Company.
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"In 1875, they were officially established as a parish in the diocese of Monterey-Los Angeles. It was at this time that San Antonio de Padua de Santa Ana, the public chapel built in 1860 by funds provided by Bernardo Yorba, was designated a “mission” of St. Boniface and their sacramental records transferred to the church in Anaheim. It’s because of this that St. Boniface traces its roots to Yorba’s chapel and claims 1860 as its genesis.
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"The current edifice is the fourth building the Church has occupied at three different locations in the downtown area. After tearing down the first building in 1879, a second New England-style wooden clapboard church was erected on the same property on Cypress Street. This building was moved to another location in 1895 on Harbor at Chartres. In 1902, construction began on a brick Gothic-style building on the northwest corner of Harbor and Lincoln which served the parish for sixty years until the growth of the Catholic population, fueled by the post-World World II baby boom required a new building--constructed in 1963-1964--which remains today."
The photo above shows the current church when it was brand new. Notice that the landscaping wasn't even in yet. The photo below shows the 1902 church at Christmas in 1960 -- ending this post on an appropriately seasonal note.

In Walter Knott's Footsteps: Calico (2)

Here are some more before-and-after shots of Calico. The images above show the same view in about 1960 and today. In the second image, Phil Brigandi stands in for Walter Knott. It appears there's no longer a post to lean on.

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The next two images show the Calico House Restaurant in 1958 and 2009. This is the big restaurant in town. Our time in town was limited, so we opted for hotdogs instead of going here.

The last two images, below, show the entrance/commisary for the Maggie Mine in the early 1950s and today. In the 1950s image, "Calico Fred" is the only person in sight. The current image includes a lot more people, including Phil, Katie, and a prospector made out of concrete by sculptor Claude Bell.

History and the Holidays

Today's photo shows Balboa Island's Marine Ave. decked out for Christmas in the late 1940s. I'm taking a break from my Knott series today to post information about some fun holiday historical events. Get out your calendar and start marking dates,...
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Come to a party, learn about local history, and do some Christmas shopping all at the same time at the Orange County Historical Society's "Author's Night" and Holiday Party on Dec. 10th. Authors speaking about, selling and signing their books at this event include Richard Dodd (Architectural Styles in Orange County), Phil Brigandi (On My Honor: A Century of Scouting in Orange County), Doris Walker (Orange County, A Natural History), Stephanie George and Carlota Haider (Sowing Dreams, Cultivating Lives: Nikkei Farmers in Pre-WWII Orange County), Jay Jennings (Knott's Berry Farm: The Early Years), Christiane Salts (Cordelia Knott: Pioneering Business Woman), and Lawrence De Graaf (The Fullerton Way: Fifty Years at California State University, Fullerton). The folks from CSUF's Center for Oral & Public History will also have a variety of their earlier titles available for sale. There will also be holiday refreshments and perhaps a visit from a famous (jolly) special guest. The program begins at 7:30pm, at Trinity Episcopal Church, 2400 N. Canal St., Orange, and is open to the public.
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The Orange County Archives, the Old O.C. Courthouse, and the Howe-Waffle House will throw open their doors for holiday open houses this Saturday, Dec. 5th. From 10am to 4pm, the Archives will offer behind-the-scenes tours and a rare weekend opportunity to do research using their outstanding collections. The general public is welcome. The Archives is located in the Old Courthouse at 211 W. Santa Ana Blvd., Room 101, in Santa Ana. The Museum upstairs will also be open and will offer crafts for kids and a showing of the movie "Rocky & Bullwinkle," which was filmed in the building in 2000. Also, the beautiful Dr. Howe-Waffle House & Medical Museum, just across the street, will offer refreshments and tours amid Victorian-inspired Christmas decor.
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The Anaheim Historical Society will hold their Annual Victorian Christmas Party at the historic Woelke-Stoffel House, 419 N. West St., this Friday, Dec. 4th. You have to see this Victorian gem (also known as "The Red Cross House") to appreciate how much restoration work has been done recently. Both the Woelke-Stoffel House and the even-more-historic Mother Colony House (next door) will also be open for open houses sponsored by the Anaheim Public Library, noon-3pm, Dec. 5 and Dec. 12.
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The Dana Point Historical Society's Holiday Open House will be held Dec. 6th, 2-5pm, at the Dana Point Community House, 24642 San Juan Ave. They're planning "an extensive display of the development of Capistrano Beach through the newly aquired Doheny Collection. There will be photos, tract maps, house plans, and [plans for] commercial buildings of the early 1930s."
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The Huntington Beach Historical Society will hold it's annual holiday open house Dec. 4th, 5-9pm, and Dec. 5th, noon-4pm, at the historic Newland House, 19820 Beach Blvd.
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No matter what part of O.C. you hail from, remember that memberships in city and county historical societies make great Christmas gifts. I suppose that sounds commercial, but becoming a part of these great non-profit groups really is a win-win situation that benefits the whole community.

In Walter Knott's Footsteps: Calico (1)

The little town of Calico, near Yermo, California, sprang to life with a silver boom. At it's peak the place had about 1,200 residents. But like most boom towns, things went bust. After a short but lively existance, from 1881 to 1896, Calico quickly faded into a "ghost town," as seen in the photo above.
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In 1951, just ten years after opening his highly sucessful mock ghost town in Buena Park, Walter Knott purchased the entire real ghost town of Calico. He already had a couple personal links to the site. First, he had briefly worked as a carpenter during a short-lived scheme to revive one of Calico's mines. Secondly, Walter's uncle, lawman John C. King helped found Calico and was a key partner in its most productive mine: The Silver King.
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The Knotts rebuilt many of the long-since-missing buildings in town, and added a few additional buildings they thought would help the tourist trade. Like Ghost Town at Knott's Berry Farm, Calico soon had a general store full of tourist tchotchkes, a saloon serving boysenberry punch, a train ride, a gussied-up mine to explore, mule rides, a "Mystery Shack," and much more. In the photos below you can see what the town looked like during Knott's reconstruction effort in the 1950s and what it looks like today. Note that both images are taken from a similar angle to the older image above.

Ultimately, government interference kept Walter from making Calico the kind of financial success he had hoped. In 1966, he gifted the whole town to the County of San Bernardino, and it became a regional park. Today, visitors can see all the layers of the site's history: From prehistoric rock formations, to silver mining boom town, to 1950s roadside attraction, to county historical park. All of it is fascinating. I'll share more Calico photos with you in the coming days.

In Walter Knott's Footsteps: Buena Park

Walter Knott and his cousin, Jim Preston, rented land south of Buena Park and started growing berries there in 1920. They soon opened a berry stand and then a nursery to sell berry plants. The before-and-after photos above show the original berry stand around 1926 and that exact same location as it appears today.

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After a while, Jim left to run his own farm in Norwalk. Then Cordelia Knott added a tea room, which eventually grew into the popular Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant (which turned 75 this year). Their daughter, Virginia, opened a small gift shop which grew into a large one. Walter started adding attractions to occupy visitors while they waited for a table at the restaurant. Eventually, this string of small attractions led to a larger one -- A replica of a Ghost Town, which opened to the public in 1941.
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One of the earliest attractions in Ghost Town was the Wagon Train Show, in the Gold Trails Hotel, which appears in the before-and-after photos below. The older photo shows the hotel (new construction, incorporating a few pieces of buildings in actual ghost towns) in the 1940s. The "after" photo shows the recently rebuilt hotel as it appears today.

I won't give you a blow-by-blow account of all the ways Knott's Berry Farm prospered and grew. It's a pretty well known story. Suffice it to say, it was very, very successful, owing in large part to the hard work of the Knott family themselves. The photos below show a later addition to Ghost Town: The Calico Saloon. The first image shows it when it was new, around 1952, and the second image shows it as it appears today.

The Calico Saloon sat right across from the Calico Mine Ride and the Calico and Ghost Town Railroad on Calico Square. Why were all these 1950s and early 1960s additions named "Calico?" Stay tuned.

In Walter Knott's Footsteps: Shandon

The Knott's long experiment in the Mojave proved a failure. Walter took other jobs nearby, including one as a carpenter in a short-lived scheme to revive a silver mine at Calico. (More on Calico later.) But it was clear that they needed a new start -- And that start appeared in the form of a job in Shandon, California, near Paso Robles. Walter was allowed to use a strip of land to raise fruits and vegetables for the ranch hands, and could sell anything they didn't eat. It turned out he had a lot left to take to market. Combined with income from Cordelia's new business making candy for nearby shops, they were soon solvent again.

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The strip of land Walter farmed in Shandon is shown below. It lay between the Estrella River and the home of the ranch owner, which is shown above in its current (vacant) state.

On their feet once again, they were prepared when, in 1920, Walter's cousin Jim Preston suggested they move south and partner with him to start a berry farm near Buena Park. Indeed, without the time they spent in Shandon, there would have been no Preston & Knott's Berry Place (later known as Knott's Berry Farm).

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The photo below shows the Shandon property from another angle. It took Katie and me a good deal of time tracking around Shandon to find this location when we visited last year. My research had only turned up a few sketchy descriptions of the property. Luckily, the guys at the local San Luis Obispo County Fire Station pointed us to a knowledgeable local rancher who in turn led us to the entrance of the Red Cedar Vinyard, where we found the ranch house.

Of course, the Knotts didn't live in the big adobe ranch house. They undoubtedly lived "in town." I never did figure out an address for them. The photo below shows the local United Methodist Church and gives you an idea of the kind of town we're talking about,... Small. Rural. A little bit charming around the edges. There are about 1,000 residents living there today. The ones I met were friendly and helpful.

Old-timers in town still remember the Knotts fondly, and recall being treated with the utmost hospitality when they later visited their old neighbors in Buena Park.

In Walter Knott's Footsteps: Newberry Springs (2)

Today's images are before-and-after photos of the Knott homestead in Newberry Springs. Aside from the small house disappearing, things haven't changed much since the family left. But with no buildings to use as landmarks, the mountains in the distance were our only guide.

The photos above look west and the ones below look east. One wonders if struggling like pioneers in an inhospitable place somehow appealed to Walter Knott (who grew up with his grandmother's stories of coming west in a covered wagon), or whether it was just the free land that appealed to him. Or perhaps a bit of both.

Standing in the middle of the desert, looking at this land, one can well imagine how hard living here must have been for Cordelia. Walter probably didn't enjoy it much either, but at least it was his idea. And as Phil pointed out, "Cordelia was a city girl" and not used to roughing it.

In Walter Knott's Footsteps: Newberry Springs (1)

The second stop on our Knott trek was the parcel of land Walter and Cordelia homesteaded in Newberry Springs on the Mojave Desert from about 1914 to about 1917. The photo above shows what it looks like today. The Knotts tried to grow grapes here, which proved to be one of their few significant business missteps. However, they still stuck it out long enough (three years) to establish the homestead.

The black and white photos in today's post are from the homestead and show the Knott kids, Cordelia, and the family dog with a number of turkeys. I don't know if I'll get to post again before the 26th, so I'd better make use of these gratuitous gobbler shots while I can.

If you don't hear from me before then (or even if you do), have a happy Thanksgiving!