#9: Walter Knott bought a real ghost town after building a fake one
By 1951, Walter Knott already knew a thing or two about selling the Old West. His growing Knott’s Berry Farm attraction in Southern California contained a carefully constructed Ghost Town filled with frontier entertainment. Then Knott turned his attention to Calico, where the ruins were real. The former silver-mining settlement had boomed in the 1880s before falling into decline when silver prices collapsed. Knott purchased the town from the Zenda Mining Company and began an extensive restoration using historic photographs and the memories of people who had known Calico in its working years.
