Knott's Berry Farm grew from a small roadside berry stand 22 miles south of Los Angeles into one of the most popular amusement parks in the United States, attracting more than 3.5 million visitors in 1996. It was privately owned by the family of Walter Knott, who started the berry farm in 1920.

In 1911, Walter Knott, then 22 and recently married, gave up his job as a bookkeeper in Pomona, California and bought 106 acres of land in the Mojave Desert to homestead. He later told interviewers, "With all that land, I thought we'd get rich." Instead, the land proved too poor to farm and Knott was forced to find other jobs, such as working in mining and highway construction, while his wife, Cordelia, stayed behind to raise their three young children, later to become four. Then in 1915, « more