Orange County was more farmland than suburb—a landscape of orange groves and cow pastures rather than tract houses and fairytale castles—when Walter Knott opened his first roadside produce stand in 1923. The dusty highway passing through Knott’s berry farm was fast becoming the principal route between Los Angeles and the beach cities of the Orange Coast, and beach-bound motorists discovered the farmer’s humble wooden shack—located near the midpoint of their drive—as a place to momentarily escape the automobile and sample Knott’s farm-fresh berries and preserves.
Keep reading the full post on Los Angeles Magazine's City Think blog.