Knott’s Berry Farm is a 160-acre amusement park in Buena Park, California, United States, owned by Cedar Fair. It was the twelfth-most visited theme park in North America in 2015. The park features 35 rides including roller coasters, family rides, children's rides, water rides, and historical rides, and it employs about 10,000 seasonal and full-time employees.
The theme park sits on the site of a former berry farm established by Walter Knott, Cordelia Knott, and their family. Beginning around 1920, 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, and the Knotts built several shops and other attractions to entertain visitors. Cordelia Knott's efforts in the Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant were essential to putting Knott's Berry Farm on the map, and the ensuing crowds prompted the creation of even more tourist attractions. In 1940, Walter Knott began constructing a replica ghost town on the property. Knott added several other attractions over the years, and began charging admission to the attractions in 1968. In 1983, Knott's Berry Farm added Camp Snoopy, which began the park's present-day association with the Peanuts characters.
In the 1990s, following the deaths of Walter and Cordelia Knott, their children sold the theme park to Cedar Fair and the family's food business to ConAgra Foods, which subsequently sold it to J. M. Smucker. Cedar Fair has continued to expand the theme park, adding Knott's Soak City in 1999 and adding new rides to the original park.
