If you have ever traveled from Los Angeles to Las Vegas vi the I-15 freeway you nave probably noticed the name Calico formed out of white rocks atop a mountain just outside of Barstow. If you ever found yourself curious enough to forgo your Vegas activities for a hour or so and detoured off the highway to discover just what is up with those rocks you would discover an unearthly looking site that was once a silver mining town. The structures range from what anyone would recognize as traditional western dwellings to others built directly into the rocky hills that would look just as much at home on Mars as they do here in the California desert.
Viewing these numerous structures makes one ponder what life was like in Calico back in it's heyday. The temperatures in this part of the country can rise to 120 degrees in the summer and the conditions must have been unbearable. Just peak inside one of the windows. The conditions were cramped, dusty and hot. These minors lived a life devoid of any luxury in pursuit of a fortune that very few ever came close to. The lure of precious metals was strong in the 1800s and the silver that was being pulled out of the nearby mountains brought fortune seekers to this inhospitable wasteland and a life of hard work personal sacrifice.
Within a decade and a half of it's founding the silver dried up and so did the town.
From The National Park Service:
Calico is an old West mining town that has been around since 1881 and was abandoned in the mid-1890s after silver lost its value. The town that once gave miners a good living lost its hustle and became a “ghost town.”
Walter Knott purchased Calico in the 1950’s architecturally restoring all but the five original buildings to look as they did in the 1880’s. Calico received State Historical Landmark 782 and in 2005 was proclaimed by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to be California’s Silver Rush Ghost Town.
Today, Calico is part of the San Bernardino County Regional Parks system, which is visited by people from across the country and from all over the world. Along with its history and attractions, Calico Ghost Town has shops, restaurants and offers camping, hiking and off-roading.
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