Hi family and friends!  Do you know who Joseph Nagnapper is? You may remember after reading today's vignette about a memorable character that I crossed paths with......Bll

Joseph Nagnapper, Horse Thief

It was in the early 1950’s when I first crossed paths with the memorable character Joseph Nagnapper, alias Sad Eye Joe. It was back in the pre-Disneyland days when dad would take us to Knott’s Berry Farm where we always looked forward to exploring Ghost Town and seeking out the farm’s iconic characters. We could always count on finding Sad Eye Joe locked up behind Goldie’s Joint in the Ghost Town Jail for stealing the sheriff’s horse (reportedly to be so slow that “he almost went backwards”). Jimmy and I were always puzzled about how Joe could always remember our names and that we were from Castro Valley! The original hand carved character was created by Ghost Town Sheriff Andy Anderson at the request of Walter Knott in 1940 to chat with folks while they waited up to three hours to be seated for Cordilia Knott’s famous fried chicken dinner. Knott had a wooden hoosegow constructed to hold the shifty “nag napper” based on a real jail in Arizona. After growing up on his fathers Colorado cattle ranch, working as a cowboy and developing his whittling skills, Anderson found his way to Knott’s Berry Farm in the 1930’s and became an important part of the creation of Ghost Town. He also carved the other humorous “peek in” characters still found in the shops along dusty Main Street including Sheriff Pat O’Leary, the Shady Gambler and Injun Joe playing cards in the Sheriff’s office, Hop Wing Lee tending to laundry, the Assayer sampling ore, and Sam the barber contemplating if the rough character with a gun on his lap is the fella pictured on a wanted poster. Several of Anderson’s other original carvings can be found in Knott’s Berry Farm’s Gold Trails Museum, in private collections and in Western Art Museums. Meanwhile Sad Eye Joe languishes in the Ghost Town Jail where he has been for more than eighty years chatting with folks and recognizing first time guests (How does he do that?).   

Memorable Characters by Bill Ralph