Nostalgia for the Old West in Knott’s Berry Farm, Orange County, California

Over the last century, western nostalgia has taken on a variety of entertainment forms. From Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows through to Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption video games, the entertainment industry has maintained an emotional attachment to America’s frontier past across a diversity of platforms. Nostalgia has translated into the setting aside of physical spaces across the trans-Mississippi (and beyond) that celebrate a mythic frontier realm. From Yosemite National Park to Dodge City and Deadwood, a range of ‘nostalgic landscapes’ collectively underline the significance of the frontier in American history, to paraphrase Frederick Jackson Turner (Turner 1921, 1), and foster a mass appreciation for nineteenth-century exploration and pioneering. The roster of nostalgic landscapes includes twentieth-century amusement parks, with Knott’s Berry Farm in Southern California one of the earliest examples of an attraction based around frontier values.