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!

In Walter Knott's Footsteps: Norco

Employees tending the Knott's short-lived attempt at a second nursery location. (Photo courtesy Orange County Archives)

On Saturday, Phil, Katie and I headed east, out of Orange County (*gasp!*) to do a sort of "Walking in Walter Knott's Footsteps" tour. Our first stop was Norco, where we found the site where the Knotts started a second berry stand and nursery. It never took off like the original Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, where selling plants through a nursery was an important part of the Knott family's business model.

The photo above shows the Norco stand and nursery in about 1930, at the southeast corner of Hamner Ave. and 3rd Street. (They also grew some berries not far away.) The photo below shows what the same spot looked like as of Saturday.

No berry plants available at the driving school. (Photo courtesy author)

Our next stop was in Newberry Springs, on the Mojave Desert, where Walter and Cordelia Knott homesteaded some land and went broke. Then we spent the rest of the day at the old mining town of Calico, which the Knotts purchased, rebuilt, and turned into a tourist attraction in the 1950s. In the coming days, I'll share photos of the homestead and Calico, along with additional information to shed more light on the Knott's story.

Postcards from Anaheim

Here are a few more postcards from Tom Pulley's collection -- This time depicting Anaheim. The postcard above shows the Municipal Light and Water Plant. (Nod to Steve Faessel.) The image below shows an earlier incarnation of Anaheim High School.

This last image (below) is from 1916 and is just one of many similar generic card designs featuring Dutch children. (Their accents always seem more German than Dutch to me, but I could be wrong.) The pennants or other decorative motifs featuring the cities names were always added later, allowing the same cards to be sold anywhere as "local." I don't quite understand what the appeal was -- But then I don't really understand the appeal of Family Circus, Precious Moments or Hello Kitty either.

Huntington Beach historical documents

Self-described "info sherpa" Richard K. Moore writes, "...With the assistance of library volunteer Stuart Gitlin, the [Huntington Beach Public] Library has digitized over 300 historical documents about the City of Huntington Beach and the Library. These scanned Adobe PDF files are useful to anyone interested in researching local history. For example, a popular school assignment is finding out how a local street got its name."

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All these documents are now available on the library's website. (This project seems like the logical next step after the historical booklets Alicia Wentworth used to put together.) I'm sure I will spend way too much time reading through this stuff in the coming weeks.

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Today's photo shows the Huntington Beach Pier, the Golden Bear, the Pav-a-lon and other downtown highlights in the 1930s. The crossed arches stood over the intersection of Main St. and Pacific Coast Highway. The photo comes from the collection of Barbara A. Milkovich.