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Did you know that Doritos were invented in Orange County? Actually, Disneyland, if we want to be more exact. Now, the lore behind the origin story of the chip is a little up in the air, as there are differing stories about who first invented the snack. But one thing that doesn’t change is that the first iteration of Doritos was developed in Anaheim. According to Snack Foods Processing, a handbook chronicling stories of legendary American snacks, Frito-Lay executives were traveling out West in the mid-1960s and discovered “toasted tortillas” in retail stores. Frito-Lay had already partnered up with Disney on Casa de Fritos, a restaurant in Disneyland where Rancho del Zocalo resides today. RELATED: Doritos born at Disneyland? Top iconic foods with O.C. roots After discussing the toasted tortillas with Alex Foods, the Anaheim food plant that made taco shells for the restaurant, a salesman from Alex Foods had an idea. He suggested the Frontierland restaurant make its own version of the snack and recommended that they make use of the leftover tortillas by cutting them up and frying them. The chip became widely popular in testing and was launched nationwide in 1966, by which time the toasted tortillas had been rebranded as Doritos, Spanish for “little gold.” Doritos aren’t the only food to have roots tied to an Orange County theme park, but in this next case, it’s actually the other way around. While the boysenberry was invented in Northern California, it would’ve been long forgotten if not for an Anaheim adventure. Originally, the berry was an invention made by amateur farmer Rudolph Boysen, who cross-pollinated the blackberry, loganberry and raspberry while living in Napa County in the 1920s. He brought the berry, which was still unnamed, with him when he moved to Anaheim and later teamed up with a Pasadena nursery to market the berry. They registered the berry with the United States Plant Husbandry Department, but unfortunately, the sales flopped and the berry was all but forgotten. That was until George Darrow, a Maryland agricultural official who visited Southern California in 1932, had a goal to find the berry marketed as a “20th-century sensation.” Darrow asked Walter Knott, a farmer from Southern California, to help him find Boysen. When the two went to Boysen’s last known Anaheim address, they found fruitless berry plants covered in weeds. Knott decided to rescue the cuttings and grow them in his Buena Park farm. Knott decided to finally name the berry and coined the fruit boysenberry after its creator. The boysenberry became Knott’s most profitable farm commodity and by 1940, the plants spanned 4 acres of Knott’s land. His wife, Cordelia, used the berry in her jams, jellies and pies, which paired well with her fried chicken suppers. The Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant was growing in popularity, with wait times to try the fried chicken and boysenberry desserts taking as long as three hours. To entertain the crowds and prevent visitors from trampling his berry farm, Knott hatched a plan to build some shops and roadside attractions inspired by the Old West. In 1968, Knott decided to follow the model of nearby Disneyland, and fenced off his farm, charged admission and turned it into the amusement park we know today as Knott’s Berry Farm. Read more Orange County History
