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Memories:
Knott's Berry Farm
By: David Moore , 29 Dec.2001
Mid '60's Knott's was just the chicken restaurant, the Wagonmaster's
show, the old West town, and FREE. My dad would take us into the general
store, and tell us that we could have all the penny candy we could hold
in one hand. We became masters of architecture, building structures
of candy in our hands as high as we could make it go. He laughs at that
story now, telling us that it still only cost him 25 or 30 cents per
hand.
- David Moore
By: Tom Coughran , 5 Aug 2001
My father, Samuel (Sam) (Sammy) Coughran owned the property where
Knott's Berry Farm (known then as Knott's Berry Place) is located. He
sold the property to Walter and Cordellia Knott. Walter told Dad that
he would pay him $1,500 for the land (I don't remember if that was per
acre or for the whole parcel). Dad told him, "Walter, you know it isn't
worth any more than $1,000." Walter told him he couldn't pay him cash,
so Dad told him, "In that case, I guess it's worth $1,500." My Mom (Florence
Margaret Inskeep) married my Dad in 1941. Dad still lived in the two
story house that was later used by the Knotts as offices. The house
is/was located just south of the Chicken Restaurant and north of the
one stall firehouse. My Mom was a waitress at the Chicken Restaurant
in its early days. On the East side of the property, along what is now
Beach Blvd., where the original entrance was located, there is or at
least was, a row of Eucalyptus trees. Dad planted those trees in 1918
or thererabouts. He told us that the first tree north of the entrance
has an "unnatural" fork in it. He said he had been plowing the field
and tied the plowhorse to the young tree while he ate his lunch. The
horse must have been humgry as well as it ate the top out of the tree,
thus, the fork. My Dad's sister, Alma, owned the property from the south
side of Dad's property to the cross street to the south (Crescent?).
I believe she owned it even before she married Elbert Carpenter, but
not sure. She was three or four years older than Dad.
- Tom Coughran
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