Calico Ghost Town

Ghost towns are big business in America. Of course, when you visit one, it’s anything but a ghost town. The idea is to give you the atmosphere of the original town that was abandonned and at the same time have shops and attractions that tourists love which may have little connection with that

original town.

Here’s our local contender, Calico, close to our campsite here in Barstow, California. The campsite even runs a free shuttle up to Calico.

Note the obligatory narrow gauge steam train in the background.

The community of Calico started in 1881 with the discovery of silver. It grew rapidly until the price of silver halved in 1907, following which the town was practically abandoned. It regenerated briefly in 1915 with a recovery of silver prices; that was also when a young carpenter called Walter Knott came to work in the town. More about Walter shortly. The original town looked like this.

This is looking up the main street as it is today.

Calico went into a permanent decline after 1915 and Walter Knott moved on. By the 1940’s he had built his own sucessful theme park business, that included a ghost town. He liked ghost towns,  so in 1951 he bought Calico, now in advanced decay, to restore it, which he did using original plans and photos. In 1966 he donated Calico to San Bernadino County who still own and run it.

The school house can be recognised in the old photo, at the top of the hill.

The town has several museums containing items from Calico’s early days, including some unusual curiosities like this wooden bath. You’d have to be really quick before the water ran out of the cracks.

The old fire engine looks the part, Keystone Cops style, but was essential in a wooden town with wood stoves for heating and cooking. Calico had several serious fires.

Being a mining town, facilities were basic in the early years. Some dwellings were constructed around hollows or caves in the rocks.

Inside is about what you would expect.

 There are 30 miles of old mine workings, but only one safe enough to walk through unescorted. It was a tough life mining ore but wasn’t as primitive as you might imagine; they had some compressed-air tools powered by a steam compressor.  

We don’t realise how big Halloween is in the USA. Shops were already selling Halloween goods in August when we arrived, and Halloween parties and events are advertised from mid October. Needless to say, in Calico – remember it’s a ghost town- they go overboard. The town is festooned with spectral figures, skeletons and pumpkins. Can’t imagine that being haunted by a pumpkin is very scary. For us, it took away the "olde mining towne" image a bit, and my photos minimise the Halloween paraphernalia. However, it’s the American thing, and they do it very well, so here’s an example of someone you don’t want to bump into when driving home on a dark night.

It was an interesting visit, but with a few reservations (not Indian ones this time). The town seemed to be more about tourist shops than its history, and some of the restoration owed more to theme park imagination than period accuracy. In fact, the one building that survives intact, from 1885, looks fairly ordinary- not what attract the visitors. 

As we were leaving, the wind started to get up. By the following day it had turned into a full scale dust storm. This picture of the motorway near the campsite was taken after the worst had passed.