How could one place have the world's best boysenberry preserves (no, Aunt Susan's isn't better!), world-class roller coasters, and Independence Hall, too?Where does a Ghost Town exist alongside a two-hundred-foot Sky Jump, while people wait three hours for a chicken dinner?Knott's Preserved: From Boysenberry to Theme Park, the History of Knott's Berry Farm has all the answers--and many, many more.From the earliest days of the Farm, when Walter Knott, his wife Cordelia, and their kids were serving up baskets of berries "as big as a man's thumb" and berry pies that weighed in at three pounds, to the advent of themed rides, Camp Snoopy replete with the Peanuts gang, and the arrival of the fastest coasters the coast had ever seen--it's all in Knott's Preserved.This updated edition to the book is brimming with more than 200 images--most of them never before published--Knott's Preserved reveals exactly how the Knott family turned a berry business into one of the major theme parks in the world. Artists and designers will flip at the details and artwork the authors display--the how-it-happened of Knott's from the earliest days. The berries and fried chicken were a just a yummy lead-in to what would become a thrills capital of the world. Plus, it's a story of how a man and a woman remained true to their values, sharing profits and credit whenever they could. Heartwarming? Yes. Decidedly so.For everybody who ever put their arms around Whiskey Bill and Handsome Brady, screamed in terror at Knott's Scary Farm, or marveled at the Calico Mine, this is the book that's filled with as much nostalgia as the Farm itself. Knott's Preserved is a must for every theme park lover and all those kids at heart.

Although the author has been unable to determine the original immigrant, the Knotts family first settled in the United States on the eastern shore of Maryland. The author traces her ancestry back nine generations to a John Knott born in 1679 in Queen Anne County, Maryland. This includes generations of the Knotts family in Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The appendix includes abstracts of census, land, probate, cemetery, marriage and tax records of the Knotts family.

This book tells the story of how a sharecropper and his wife, and their four children, create America's first them park. It includes biographical information of the Knott family ancestors. This book includes the amazing transformation of the family's roadside stand selling berries, turning into a full blown restaurant, and ultimately becoming a theme park.

Before there was a Disneyland, there was Knott's Berry Farm. What started out in the early 1920s as a small, roadside berry stand in Buena Park, California, grew over the next 60 years into one of the most popular amusement parks in the world. Its founder, Walter Knott, along with his wife and family, knew no boundaries when it came to expanding his small berry market and tearoom into the world-famous Chicken Dinner Restaurant and later adding his ultimate achievement, Ghost Town. This book documents the early history of Knott's Berry Farm, featuring over 200 rarely seen images.

This is a history of the Walter and Cordelia Knott family. It describes the amazing life journey of Walter from his birth in San Bernardino, California through his time as a young farmer, to his days as a political activist towards the end of his life. It includes his courtship and marriage to his wife Cordelia. It includes how a small berry farm in Buena Park grew into America's first theme park. The book explains how Cordelia Knott and her four children played an integral part in the development of the family enterprise. It also explores the influence Knott had on Walt Disney, and Disneyland. The book includes an informative portrayal of the key architect of the corporation that now owns and manages Knott's, George A. Boeckling.