![]() Calico is served by a large, full service campground and RV site, on a patch of bare red earth on the east side of the entrance road, while free camping is available a few miles away along several tracks leading north further into the mountains, in the general direction of Rainbow Basin. Regular special events are staged a few days each month, such as music festivals, civil war re-enactments or western parades. Other activities on offer (for additional payment) are panning for gold, catching a play at the theater, watching cowboys stage mock gunfights, or riding a narrow gauge steam train. Various pieces of original or restored equipment are scattered around the houses, such as carriages, wagons and mining tools, and large (artificially-planted) ferocacti add to the desert experience. Higher up in the hills are various mine buildings, plus the shafts/tunnels of an actual mine, one of which may be visited as part of a guided tour. The one main street through town is lined with about 30 replica wooden/adobe buildings, some used as gift shops, art galleries or cafes, and including a jail, blacksmiths shop, saloon, drug store, candle shop, museum & stables. Some of the replica houses have only a frontage, as if part of a movie set.Ĭalico is easily reached, being 4 miles from I-15 near the I-40 junction, 12 miles east of Barstow, and half way between Los Angeles and Las Vegas so a good place to break the journey. The site is now a thriving tourist attraction, and is quite interesting to visit despite being neither original nor very atmospheric, as only about four of the buildings are largely unchanged from the mining era, and the whole place is rather commercialized. ![]() ![]() Calico was soon abandoned and left to gradually decay in the desert sun until little remained, but in 1951 it was purchased by Walter Knott, an ex-miner (who also founded Knott's Berry Farm at Buena Park) and rebuilt as a modern 'ghost town'. The early history of Calico is similar to that of hundreds of other Southwest mining towns, starting with a period of quick growth followed by a brief boom time then a rapid decline as the mines, in this case silver and borax, became less profitable. ![]()
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