6. Calico Ghost Town, Yerma, California

After photographing Oro Grande, we continued westward on Old Route 66/I-15. However, we turned around at Victorville without stopping, deciding instead to take a side trip to Calico Ghost Town, only about 10 miles past and northeast of Barstow off I-15. Calico was an “Old West” silver mining town, active for about a dozen years or so beginning in 1881 and abandoned in the mid-1890s when silver lost its value. In the 1950s Walter Knott of Knott’s Berry Farm fame bought the property and is largely responsible for the restoration and reconstruction of the structures in the town. Today, it is a regional park.

We ate lunch at the Calico House Restaurant (with the row of wooden rocking chairs on its veranda),

rode the narrated tour train around the mine on the narrow-gauge tracks,

shopped in the Native Indian gift shop, and, of course, took more pictures.

We then returned to the Route 66 Motel in Barstow.

(to be continued…) SUBSCRIBE to my Blog at the very bottom of the page!