My Orange County Roots

A local newspaper recently did a story on my family ties to Knott's and Orange County--if you are interested.  That's my mom (at nineteen) behind the counter next to Walter Knott in the original Berry Market, about 1939.

Thanks Brooklynn!

Fourth-generation local has an illustrious family history at Knott’s and in Orange County

By Brooklynn Wong

Orange County has changed a lot over the last century. What was once farmland has become suburbia; what was a homogenous post-war settlement has become multiracial; and what was a local stand to sell berries to families on their way to the beach has become an amusement park visited by millions each year.

One man, who has lived in the same home, blocks away from Knott’s Berry Farm for his entire life, has had a unique vantage point to the changes.

Dr. Kim Riddlebarger is a Buena Park lifer, spent years running a business at Knott’s, and his family roots run deep, as his relatives were around in the earliest days.

Knott’s Berry Farm, at the start, was just that. A man named Walter Knott and his wife Cordelia opened a berry stand. Beginning in the 1930s, Walter and Anaheim City Parks Superintendent and horticulturist Rudolph Boysen began selling the boysenberry, a hybrid fruit Boysen had created.

To read the rest, The Riddlebargers and Buena Park