Thursday, April 17, 2008

Knott's Berry Farm - Calico Mine Co. Mine Tour Tickets


Today lets take a look at Knott's Berry Farm's famed "Calico Mine Co." Mine Tour tickets. Opened in 1960, this attraction is still running strong today.

These first three scans were donated by Chris Merritt. Chris got these actual tickets from Bud Hurlbut. Bud is the designer of the Calico Mine Train Ride and the Calico Log Ride at Knott's. Bud is an amusement park legend. "The Dean of Amusement Rides". If you have not read the "E-Ticket" volume 35, you should, Bud has an amazing story as interviewed by Chris. Thanks Chris and Bud for the donations!

Not dated, but it sure does look old! Chris mentioned Bud designed one of these three tickets, but I'm not sure which one?







The 75¢ price is interesting as most paper items I have show it was always 50¢ on the individual tickets. Was the price possibly lowered at some point? I'm guessing this is the one Bud designed.






From Bud's collection, a very low serial number of the more common type of ticket.






From my collection, this is basically the same as Bud's, with the exception of the word "adult" missing near the 50¢ part on this one. And now it is on Globe Ticket Paper. Oh, and it was used hence the whole punched in it.






Here is a little back story on the back.






Still no dates, but these just seem a little newer than the previous one. Also from my collection.






The backs also changed a little bit. Notice the Globe Ticket Co. reference, missing from the earlier tickets, even though they are Globe paper as well.






Similar to the one above, this is a "Child" ticket.






Chris Merritt also donated a bunch more ticket scans from Bud's collection, here are three in a row, WOW, I really like these! More to come in future posts....






I am crazy about this one! Globe paper and Independence Hall!





Sombrero Fun!





Although this post does have some color, it needed more so here are a couple of pages dedicated to the Calico Mine Train Ride from the 1976 Knott's Souvenir book. If you missed this guide, you should give it a look.

Knott’s Souvenir Edition Guide Book 1976 (93mb)





Ok, this is not the Calico Mine train, it's a runaway mine train! It could only happen at Disneyland.



2 comments:

Chris Merritt said...

That illustrated Mine Ride ticket (05937) is on a heavy card stock, as opposed to a thin paper globe style like the following Mine Ride tickets you post. I would imagine these were pretty expensive to print up, and they went with the globe paper quickly - but that's just a guess on my part.

The generic looking one completely baffles me, as do the other kind of generic ones - he had a bunch of them in a box at his shop, and very nicely gave me one of each! But they are strange...

Major Pepperidge said...

Wow, that is a ton of great information and a lot of great images too. I feel so lazy by comparison!