It was located on a major road (Highway 39 - now Beach Blvd) before freeways, and it grew in popularity. The husband, little by little, added some bits of ghost towns (Prescott Arizona, Calico, etc) to create a theme area to enjoy after dinner.
By the time I remember things, we used to eat every now and then at Knott's. I didn't particular like the food, since Zela made much better fried chicken, but the appeal of the ghost town was fantastic. And, yes it was far from our house, but very close to my Aunt and Uncle, who we visited a lot, but we didn't really like them and their house of many many mean children. So we would spend the least acceptable amount of time there and then head out to dinner at Knott's.
After dinner we would wander the ghost town. As I was under 8, I no doubt whined to go on the mine train - which was the only real ride and I think it was 35 cents, but don't quote me.
On a great day, we would eat out in the Wagon Train with entertainment. I loved that.
In 1968, they started charging 25 cents to get into the ghost town. It stayed really low, until the early 70's, when they decided to make a real theme park. Then, after the parents died, the family sold the theme park to a theme park group and the boysenberry name to Smuckers it all went in the toilet.
But it was a happy memory this morning for no reason.
*
The exact origins of the boysenberry are unclear, but the most definite records trace the plant as it is known today back to grower Rudolph Boysen, who obtained the dewberry/loganberry parent from the farm of John Lubben.[5]
In the late 1920s, George M. Darrow of the USDA began tracking down reports of a large, reddish-purple berry that had been grown on Boysen's farm in Anaheim, California.[6] Darrow enlisted the help of Walter Knott, another farmer, who was known as a berry expert. Knott had never heard of the new berry, but he agreed to help Darrow in his search.
Darrow and Knott learned that Boysen had abandoned his growing experiments several years earlier and sold his farm. Undaunted by this news, Darrow and Knott headed out to Boysen's old farm, on which they found several frail vines surviving in a field choked with weeds. They transplanted the vines to Knott's farm in Buena Park, California, where he nurtured them back to fruit-bearing health. Walter Knott was the first to commercially cultivate the berry in Southern California.[6] He began selling the berries at his farm stand in 1932 and soon noticed that people kept returning to buy the large, tasty berries. When asked what they were called, Knott said, "Boysenberries," after their originator.[7] His family's small restaurant and pie business eventually grew into Knott's Berry Farm. As the berry's popularity grew, Mrs. Knott began making preserves, which ultimately made Knott's Berry Farm famous.
By 1940, 599 acres (242 ha) of land in California were dedicated to boysenberries; the number would trail off during World War II but peak again in the 1950s at about 2,400 acres, to the point where boysenberry crops exceeded those of the (previously) more common raspberry and blackberry.[3] By the 1960s, the boysenberry began to fall out of favor due to a combination of being difficult to cultivate, susceptible to fungal diseases in coastal growing areas, and too soft and delicate to easily ship without damage, as well as having a short season of availability compared with newer cultivars.[3] In the 1980s, breeding efforts in New Zealand combined cultivars and germplasm from California with Scottish sources to create five new thornless varieties.[5]
As of the early 2000s, fresh boysenberries were generally only grown for market by smaller California farmers and sold from local farm stands and markets.[3] Most commercially grown boysenberries, primarily from Oregon, are processed into other products such as jam, pie, juice, syrup, and ice cream.[3] Since 2007, a hybrid variety called the "Newberry" or "Ruby Boysen", was developed to overcome cultivation challenges that led to the decline in boysenberry popularity, and was marketed through farm markets and retailers in California.[3]