The birth of Knott’s Berry Farm from the Great Depression

(Part I)

Have you ever thought of doing something that others told you was farfetched or would be hard to achieve? Maybe you wanted to learn a new skill, reach a certain score in a sport, or find a way to sell something you made. If you tried hard and reached your goal, you could call yourself “determined.” Cordelia Knott was just like that.

The young Cordelia

Cordelia Hornaday was born on Jan. 23, 1890, in Bushton, Illinois. Her mother, Martha, died at the young age of 44 when she was just 11. In order to cope, Cordelia grew up fast and learned to be self-reliant and strong. She became a substitute mother to her young sister and now had to do the things pioneer women had to do – bake bread, make soap, do the laundry by hand, and do all the things like sewing and clothes-making. She had learned skills like needlework, ironing with a flat iron, and making a pie from her mother Martha.

Cordelia graduated from high school, but never had the chance to proceed for extra training. She was self-taught and had a knack for working with food to make it presentable and tasty. Today, we would call her a master chef, even though she never went to culinary school.

Forced by circumstances, the Hornadays took a four-day journey toward the west coast – the town of Pomona.

Those were the early days of the 20th century, when girls wore long dresses and admired boys their age from a distance. More than once, she caught admiring looks from young men. But she noticed a particular young man who seemed different. He didn’t goof off like the others in the class. He was serious-minded and intent on his assignments. Walter Knott was a very determined person and was set on working hard to reach his goals. He reminded Cordelia of her father, John, whom she loved very much.

After several chance encounters, she took a liking to him. Their friendship grew over the next two years, at which time Walter worked at several jobs to help earn money for his widowed mother and family. He was a field worker in the Imperial and Coachella Valleys’ vegetable gardens. He became a cement contractor and eventually, a construction foreman. Walter had saved almost $500 in hard-earned money.

Horse buggy courtship and marriage at 21

Cordelia was especially pleased whenever they could get the same days off from work since these were the only times they could see each other. Walter would show up at her doorstep to take her on a horse and buggy ride. A few times, Cordelia fixed up a picnic basket. Walter was impressed with the delicious lunch of fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits that tasted ever so good, washed down with ice-cold lemonade.

Cordelia and Walter were married on a hot summer’s day in June of 1911, when they were both 21 years old. After she turned 23 years old, Cordelia gave birth to Virginia Maurine Knott on Jan. 26, 1913.

Cordelia was content in her life as wife and mother, but she noticed that Walter was not always happy in his job. He kept talking of his dream to own a farm for he yearned to be outdoors in the fields.

One day, he said, “Cordy, let’s go to the Mojave Desert and stake out a homestead claim of land for ourselves. We could own 160 acres of land if we lived on it for three years and make improvements!” Cordelia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It took one year before Cordelia realized there was no use in her trying to hold Walter back from his dream. So in 1914, with little one-year-old Virginia on her lap, Cordelia found herself riding on a wagon over the bumpy desert road for seemingly endless miles, going west from the Santa Fe train station in Newberry, California.

Finally, they arrived at their Mojave homestead. Their house had only two rooms, with no running water and indoor bathroom! Everyday, Walter braved the hot desert to haul water from the windmill well and to bring water from the deeper well to the grapevines he had planted. But just as the vines were about to produce grapes, a windstorm pulled them out of the ground.

‘The only good thing we raised in the desert was a big bunch of children.’

The Knott family only had milk from their one cow and some eggs from their few chickens. Trying to farm in the desert was not possible without a heavy-duty well, which they could not afford. Walter began to do odd jobs like making adobe bricks or working as a carpenter to help rebuild the mill where they used to mine silver 35 years earlier. This job took him away from home so Cordelia, who was pregnant with their second child was left home alone for days at a time.

On Jan. 10, 1916, Walter took Cordelia to Pomona to give birth to their son Russell. Back home in the desert, the couple settled into their routine of trying to make a go of it in a hostile desert environment. The winds and sandstorms were relentless, and dust was everywhere. Even the food tasted like sand.

Soon after little Russell had turned one, second daughter Rachel Elizabeth was born on Jan. 25, 1917. Being the oldest, Virginia helped watch her little sister and brother while their mother did the outside chores, or was busy with an occasional visitor. There was no money for buying store-bought clothing. They had to make do with what they had, to repair and patch it up and make it last. Cordelia had a sewing machine, and Virginia watched closely as her mom and neighbor Margaret made themselves pretty Sunday dresses. Cordelia later said to her good friend Margaret, “The only good thing we raised in the desert was a fine bunch of children!” The Knott family had to stay close together and help each other in order to survive against the desert elements. It was this closeness that would carry them through many tough times in the future.

‘Nothing could faze us after all the hardships we went through.’

Three years had passed, and now Walter and Cordelia were landowners of 160 acres of land – free and clear – in the desert. The other settler’s shacks and adobes had been abandoned because they could not survive and stay for three years. They had lost their claims. Walter later reflected, “The hardships we endured made us tough. After what we went through there, nothing could faze us.”

So they put their things on the wagon, tied the buggy behind, and set out for the new job Walter had arranged at a cattle ranch in San Luis Obispo County. As they got to the busy modern city of Pasadena on a Sunday, Walter and Cordelia noticed people pointing and whistling at them. Walter tried to ignore them. He felt embarrassed about being seen in faded overalls on an old dilapidated wagon that was ever-so-slow in making its way down the busy fashionable boulevard.

The Knott family lived in a rented modest house in Shandon, paying $8 a month for the next three years. As a sharecropper, Walter helped farm seven and a half acres of land. First, he cleared the fields and then planted a variety of seeds. While waiting for six months for the seeds to grow, Walter did odd jobs for the rancher, like fixing broken machines, repairing tanks and doing cement work. Sometimes, the Knotts were given odd types of meat in return for Walter’s hard work. One day young Virginia and Russell squirmed as they saw twenty hogs’ heads in the kitchen sink. Cordelia would cook the pork along with beans and black-eyed peas, which were one of the main things they could afford to eat. She was a master at using what Walter was able to provide.

Once the crops grew, the Knott family had an over-abundance of vegetables to choose from. Later at Christmas, the money they had saved enabled them to buy a used 1917 Model T Ford. Walter joined his cousin Jim Preston to farm, renting 20 acres for $1,000 a year on a five-year lease. They were set to have the biggest berry farm in California. Here the family spent three years until 1920 when Walter’s desire to be a landowner seemed within reach. Orange County was a farmland with rows of orange groves, beet fields and walnut orchard.

The tea room and berry jam that lifted the knotts from the Great Depression

 Cordelia and Walter had real trouble providing enough food for their family of six. To help business, Walter built a berry market on Grand Avenue (now Beach Boulevard) where well-to-do folks, driving to their summer homes in the beach cities, as well as regular commuters stopped to buy blackberries, dewberries and young berries. Even truckers used the berry market as a rest stop. Walter did a lot of advertising while putting all his attention into making the crops grow.

By 1927, the five-year lease on the land had run out. Land prices were now sky-high because of the local oil boom. Walter wanted to buy ten acres but his partner Jim thought it too high. Walter stuck to his principles and signed a contract to purchase ten acres at a price more than twice as much as they had to pay for renting the land before.

Although the berry market had grown big with an added nursery section to sell berry plants, the Knott family faced more hard times as the stock market crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression started. To Walter it meant the cost of raising berries was more than they could sell them for and it also meant less customers. Once again Cordelia became creative, thinking “I can take the leftover fruit that doesn’t sell and make jam and jelly and even pies and sell them. Walter began to grow asparagus and artichokes too, as well as other in-season vegetables like rhubarb. The children even helped out standing on street corners yelling, ”Rhubarb for sale – dime a dozen!”

Soon, one end of the Berry Market became a Tea Room, where customers enjoy Cordelia’s homey kindness as she served them homemade rolls, jam and pies. The Tea Room had five tables and could serve up to 20 customers at one time. The Knott girls are hit waitresses. When more and more people came to eat there, Cordelia decided to add sandwiches to the menu. The little Tea Room was bursting at the seams as customers lined up at mealtimes. Cordelia now needed to hire local farmwomen to help in the kitchen, but she resolved not to expand into a restaurant.

Part II – “Cordelia’s Fried Chicken – Trailblazer for America’s First Amusement Park

(Reference: Cordelia Knott the Pioneer by Christiane Salts)

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