Berry Tract

Berry Tract covers 75.5 acres and the city's address layer records 320 addresses inside the boundary across 322 parcels, with lots running to a median of 0.202 acres. Seven streets run inside across 2.11 miles, among them Berry, Knott, Holder, Houston, Naomi, Silver and Thelma. The city zones 51.9 acres for 6,000 square foot one family residential lots, 11.9 acres as Open Space and 1.5 acres as Community Shopping.

Nearly twelve acres of the Silverado Trail fall inside the boundary, part of a 21.8 acre walking and cycling pathway on the city's own park record. Two Orange County Transportation Authority bus stops and half a mile of bikeway sit inside as well. Mail carries the 90620 zip code, and the neighborhood feeds Raymond Temple Elementary, Walker Junior High and John F. Kennedy High.

Two of the seven street names here tell the whole story: Berry and Knott. Walter and Cordelia Knott came to Buena Park on 15 December 1920 and leased ten acres of farmland, bought it in 1927 and added ten more in 1929. Around 1923 they started selling berries, preserves and pies from a stand on the highway that is now Beach Boulevard. In 1932 a neighbor named Rudolph Boysen handed Walter six struggling crossbred plants; Walter nursed them back and the fruit went out under the name boysenberry, which is how a Buena Park farm ended up naming a berry the world grows.

The rest followed from the crowd the berries drew. Cordelia served the first chicken dinner from the family tearoom in June 1934, and by 1942 the restaurant was putting out ten thousand dinners a week. Walter began building a replica Ghost Town in 1940 to give the queue something to look at, and it opened on 17 July 1941. The whole place was renamed Knott's Berry Farm in 1947. Knott Avenue, the western spine of this neighborhood, carries the family name, and Berry Street runs beside it.