Calico Ghost Town

Calico Ghost Town is found on 1-15 between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Most people who stop there do so because they spot the billboard while on the way to or from Las Vegas. Before 1907, before the price of silver dropped, before the borax exodus to Death Valley, the place was crawling with a thousand or so miners crawling in and out of the holes that pock the mountain side.

In 1951, Knotts Berry Farm founder Walter Knotts, purchased the ghost town and began restoration. In 1966 he donated the park to San Bernadino County. Today, about a third of the adobe and wood buildings straddling the wooden sidewalks on the 480-acre parcel are originals. The rest, like the blacksmith shop, the schoolhouse and the essay office, are reproductions. The weddings in the chapel are real; the gunfights on the streets are staged. Most of the shop owners sell their souvenirs and country wares dressed in period clothing.