page_title: Knott's Berry Farm
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Knott's Berry Farm / History / Origin
caption_attribution_description: English: Big Foot Rapids is located in the Wild Wilderness section of the park.
context_page_description: Knott's Berry Farm is a 57-acre theme park located in Buena Park, California, owned and operated by Cedar Fair. In 2018, it was the twelfth-most-visited theme park in North America and averages approximately 4 million visitors per year. The park features 40 rides including roller coasters, family rides, dark rides and water rides.
  The theme park began in the 1920s as a road-side berry stand run by Walter Knott along State Route 39 in California. By the 1940s, a restaurant, several shops, and other attractions had been constructed on the property to entertain a growing number of visitors, including a replica ghost town. The site continued its transformation into a modern amusement park over the next two decades, and an admission charge was added in 1968. In 1997 the park was sold to Cedar Fair for $300 million, just two years after the Knott's food business was acquired by Conagra, Inc. in 1995.
context_section_description: The park sits on the site of a former berry farm established by Walter Knott and his family. Beginning in the mid 1920s, the Knott family sold berries, berry preserves, and pies from a roadside stand along State Route 39. In 1934, the Knotts began selling fried chicken dinners in a tea room on the property, later called "Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant." The dinners soon became a major tourist draw, and the Knotts built several shops and other attractions to entertain visitors while waiting for a seat in the restaurant. In 1940, Walter Knott began constructing a replica Ghost Town on the property, the beginning of the present-day theme park. The idea of an amusement park really picked up in the 1950s when Walter Knott opened a "summer-long county fair."
  In 1968, for the first time, an admission price was required to get into the park, originally set at 25 cents. The Calico Log Ride (the original name of the Timber Mountain Log Ride) opened in 1969. The park became a popular destination for conservative college students in the 1960s, especially as conservative organizations like the California Free Enterprise Association, the Libres Foundation, and the Americanism Educational League were based there. According to Assistant Professor Caroline Rolland-Diamond of the Paris West University Nanterre La Défense:
  it also appealed to conservative Americans, young and old, because the idealized representation of a past devoid of social and racial tensions that it offered stood in sharp contrast with the political and social upheavals affecting California since the Free Speech Movement erupted at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964.
  — Caroline Rolland-Diamond, Revue française d'études américaines (2016)
  On April 12, 1974, Cordelia Knott died. Walter turned his attention toward political causes, Roaring Twenties rethemed Gypsy Camp in the 1970s with the addition of a nostalgic traditional amusement area, Wheeler Dealer Bumper Cars, Knott's Bear-y Tales. Then with the northward expansion of a 1920s-era Knott's Airfield themed area featuring the Cloud 9 Dance Hall, Sky Cabin/Sky Jump and Motorcycle Chase steeplechase roller coaster above the electric guided rail Gasoline Alley car ride.
  Sky Tower with the illuminated "K" in logo script at the top was built to support two attractions, the Sky Jump (now closed) and the Sky Cabin. The Sky Jump boarded one or two standing riders anticipating the thrill of the drop into baskets beneath a faux parachute canopy. From the top, eight arms supported the vertical cable tracks of wire rope which lifted the baskets. The Sky Cabin ringed the support pole with a single floor of seats that are enclosed behind windows. Its ring revolves slowly as it rises to the top and back offering a pleasantly changing vista. It is very sensitive to weather and passenger motion, such as walking, which is prohibited during the trip. During winds 25+ mph or rain it is closed. When built, Sky Tower was the tallest structure in Orange County (a distinction briefly held by WindSeeker before its relocation to Worlds of Fun in 2012.)
  Motorcycle Chase, modernized steeplechase rollercoaster built in 1976 by Arrow Development, featured single motorbike themed vehicles racing side-by-side, each on one of four parallel tracks, launched together. One or two riders straddled each "Indian motorcycle" attraction vehicle. The tubular steel monorail track closely followed dips and bumps in "the road" and tilted to lean riders about the curves. Gasoline Alley, an electric steel-guiderail car ride below, was built together and intimately intertwined, which enhanced ride-to-ride interaction thrill value. Rider safety concerns of the high center of gravity coupled with the method of rider restraints caused it to be rethemed Wacky Soap Box Racers with vehicles themed to look like soap box racers, each seating two riders, strapped in low (nearly straddling the track), surrounded by the close fitting car sides, and the dips and bumps of the track were straightened flat in 1980.
  Motorcycle Chase/Wacky Soap Box Racers was
caption: Big Foot Rapids is located in the Wild Wilderness section of the park.
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