Collection: California Alligator Farm

From an OC Register article featuring Chris Epting:

“For about a week in May 1960, the country turned its attention to Buena Park and the fate of a man who ran the California Alligator Farm. Time magazine, among others, tracked Ken Earnest, who was fighting for his life after suffering a bite – from a snake, not a gator – at the Buena Park attraction. The episode was a high point of a certain type of innovation in the county, which was host to (or had hosted or soon would host) a buffalo show, a lion park, a deer park, roaming ostriches and basketball-playing bears. And the gators. The California Alligator Farm ran in Buena Park from 1953 to 1984, and it closed only after annual attendance dipped under 50,000. The gators moved to Florida; Earnest survived the bite. Today, the land is vacant, just west of a Claim Jumper restaurant.”

What do you remember about the California Alligator Farm? Did you know that Knott’s Berry Farm provided food for the gators for years, delivering unused raw chicken each night from their famous fried chicken restaurant.