Buena Park, California

Buena Park was founded in eighteen eighty-seven by James Whitaker, a Chicago businessman who bought land on the Southern Pacific line and platted a town called Buena Park, a Spanish name meaning good park, though the exact origin of the name is uncertain. Whitaker's subdivision offered free lots to anyone who would build within two years, a common promotional strategy of the Southern California land boom. The town grew slowly as a farming community raising walnuts, citrus, and chili peppers.

Its modern identity arrived when Walter Knott, who had been selling berries from a roadside stand and fried chicken dinners since the Great Depression, began building a replica Ghost Town in nineteen forty that grew into Knott's Berry Farm. The park had grown organically around the original farmstand, and it now anchors a corridor of attractions along Beach Boulevard that tourism boosters branded the Entertainment Capital of Orange County.