Old Nick

Hi family, friends,  and theme park buddies! My first trip to Knott's Berry Farm was in the early 1950's but I still have vivid memories of Walter's volcano and "Old Nick". I hope that you enjoy this little vignette of a simpler time....Bill

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MUSINGS OF A THEME PARK FAN

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ONLY “ACTIVE” VOLCANO (?) IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WAS MOVED IN 40 MILES FROM THE DESERT.

KNOTT”S BERRY PLACE

BUENA PARK, CALIF.

Business was great in 1938 when Walter and Cordilia Knott decided to expand their Chicken Dinner Restaurant to accommodate up to 600 hungry guests. However, the addition of the new wing to the North side of the building would prominently expose a highly unattractive but necessary 12 foot high cement stand pipe just outside the windows. Knott’s Berry Farm fan’s are familiar with how Walter Knott created  diversions, including a full size ghost town, to keep restaurant guests entertained as they waited up to 3-1/2 hours to be seated so it’s no surprise that he would find a way to transform the ugly pipe into an visual attraction. With the help of his farmhands he had sand piled up around the pipe forming a cone and then covered it with a layer of lava rock leftover from the fern grotto constructed inside the restaurant. The “volcano’s” eruption effects were made with a small steaming boiler while rumbling sounds were created in a stone structure with a small electric motor and cam system animating a carved wooden devil, “Old Nick” pounding on an electrified wire screen. The $600 project was highly successful and with various improvements entertained guests for 60 years until it was demolished in 1998 to make way for the massive Ghost Rider wooden rollercoaster. Walter Knott’s volcano was the first of what would become a theme park staple. Disney added a lava spewing volcano in 1966 with Primeval World, Land of the Dinosaurs and soon volcano’s began appearing in other Disney Parks and countless amusement venues. Not to be outdone, Universal Orlando added Volcano Bay Water Theme Park in 2017, and France has an entire volcano themed park, Vulcania “The European Park of Volcanism”, and to think that it all began with a truck load of sand, a pile of left-over lava rock....and an idea.    

From the postcard collection of Bill Ralph