THE KNOTT'S BERRY FARM MUSEUM: 2. Knott's Menus

Knott's Berry Farm menus are a neat relic of days gone by. Beginning with a one-page menu in 1928 and continuing throughout the years with different incarnations of The Chicken Dinner Restaurant menu, each version is a colorful reminder of how Knott's used to be. The early, color menus featured a Rockwellian, slice of life on the cover; a boysenberry field, a group of boysenberries, the restaurant, trees and old automobiles. Later editions kept the same scenery on the cover with minor changes. By the late 1960s, the menu cover changed drastically, featuring a montage of Old West items, including a rifle and an old framed picture of the restaurant's interior. Other interesting menus came from The Steakhouse and The Ghost Town Grill. The Steakhouse menu featured Indian Chief's and Squaws in their magnificent head dresses on the cover during the late-1940s and early 50s. One edition of The Steakhouse menu was even in the shape of a buffalo (see display). But the one thing about all these menus that stands out, was not only did you get a list of food, drinks and desserts, but each one had extra pages filled with brief, Knott's family biographies and photographs of the latest attractions of the day. One of my personal favorite sections of each menu were the two adjoining pages that showed how many of Mrs. Knott's chicken dinners were served on an annual basis at the farm. The fact is, Knott's Berry Farm menus are a very important collectible, not only because they show how inexpensive the food on the menu was, but because each one serves as a time capsule of what the farm was like during the early years.