Somewhere
around the age of twelve, my parents introduced me to my first ghost town. Then
and there, I not only fell in love with Calico and her rustic personality, but all ghost towns regardless
of location and the various histories surrounding them.
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| Calico Ghost Town by Enrico Stirl Germaneon |
High
in the hills, just outside the very small town of Yermo, California, (which is
not far from Barstow), sits the mining town of Calico, founded in the year 1881.
The townsfolk completely abandoned the place in 1907 when the silver and borax
mines no longer produced sufficient quantities to keep the town alive. During Calico's heydey, one could count at least five hundred
different mines, dine in three
restaurants, rent rooms in various boarding
houses, read a weekly newspaper, visit bars, brothels, and a post office. The
town had a deputy sheriff and a couple of constables, as well. Over twelve hundred people populated the town
at the height of its silver production.
And of course, like so many small towns in the wild, wild, west, the
Boot Hill Cemetery housed its share of local bad guys.
In
1915, they built a cyanide plant at Calico, to recover the unprocessed silver
from the Silver King Mine. Despite the existence of the plant, the town didn't recover. Yet, as fate would have it, Walter Knott, (founder of the famous Knott's Berry
Farm) assisted in building the tanks used for the plant. He must have seen something he liked, because
in 1951 he bought the town and with the use of old photographs, began to
restore it to its former glory. Visitors came in droves and many of those
visitors experienced far more than the amazing restoration of the property. You see, it's not uncommon for a tourist to
report an encounter with one of the former, other-worldly residents...
