Knott's Berry Farm and more!

[betamike]

Hey gang!  I stumbled upon a really great site that contains a few parks from California.  In particular, there is a great section on Knott's Berry Farm.  If you don't know the story about this Anaheim park, you should recognize it for being the first "official" theme park as it pre-dates SDC and it's giant cousin down the street...Disneyland.

There is a bit of an SDC connection to Knott's as well.  During the early days of Silver Dollar City, many of the "citizens" went out to California to benchmark ideas for SDC.  Really?!?!  You ask?  Yep!  Aunt June describes her trip to get inspiration for the candy factory that we all know and love today.  Also, they had a Butterfield Stage Coach attraction, Silver Dollar Saloon (yep, that was it's real name), log flume ride, and many other SDC-centric attractions that look very familiar.  They say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

Lots of really great archival postcards, photos, menus, etc posted here.

http://www.image-archeology.com/knotts_berry_farm.htm

[mhguy77]

I was reading a article at Jim Hills site
http://jimhillmedia.com/Editor_In_Chief/b/jim_hill/archive/2010/07/16/sneaking-a-peek-at-theme-parks-that-might-have-been.aspx

Talking about Harrison Price, a man that worked for Disney and other parks doing feasibility studies.
In this artice there is mention that he did a study in 1994 for Knotts and the Branson Meadows area.
Interesting, I think they could easily pull of a Knotts in Branson.