Detours
The average American ghost town is a yawn. Few offer much to see or experience beyond the odd clapped-out shack and those wilderness staples: rattlesnakes, tumbleweed and the howling wind.
Calico is different, however. Set between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the Mojave Desert, this lively outpost takes its name from the colours of the surrounding mountains, which bring to mind the brilliance of the cloth.
Calico's lurid history began in 1881 with a rich silver strike that triggered a rush. Up to 1907, Calico produced as much as US$20 million in silver from more than 500 mines, including a supreme cash cow called Silver King. Less glamorously, Calico also produced US$9 million in borate minerals, which are used in cleaning.
At the height of the mining era, the boom town had a population of more than 1,200. At the time it rejoiced in no fewer than 22 saloons and a Chinatown established by an influx of Guangdong fortune-seekers. At first, the locals were prejudiced against the newcomers.
When the leader of the Chinese community, Yung Hen, announced he planned to open a restaurant, roughnecks rose in protest. But Yung managed to win them over and earned their respect by establishing a couple of boarding houses as well.
Commenting on the town's red light district, historian Serena Steiner says with understatement: 'Calico was not a large or wealthy town, so the brothels were not high-class establishments.' Lodgings ranged from poky hotels to tents and crude rock cabins, where some locals lived alone on the hillsides. The high desert climate was extreme, with cold, windy winters with temperatures that could fall below freezing offset by blistering summers.
According to Steiner, the atmosphere was reasonably civilised. 'But some men did carry revolvers and there were a few shoot-outs over such things as card games and mining disputes,' she says. 'It is said all saloon owners kept a weapon under the bar.'
After the price of silver went down like a cowboy in a bar-room brawl during the mid-1890s, the town began to disintegrate. When borax mining shifted to Death Valley in 1907, the town went under.
Calico might have crumbled into the desert were it not for an ex-Calico miner Walter Knott, who had made a fortune farming berries. Knott bought the town in 1951 and began to restore it from old photographs.
Calico's saviour left out the brothels, but his sanitised 'ghost town' features plenty to keep the visitor interested including an original mine called Maggie's, a mystery shack, the jail, a shooting gallery and stunt gunfights, among other attractions.
A third of the town, which now has a population of eight, is original. That it survives in any form borders on the miraculous in the light of what the elements have thrown at it. Calico suffered major fires in 1884, 1887 and 1890. In 1997, it was rocked by an earthquake nudging 5.4 on the Richter scale (six buildings were damaged). In 2001, fire struck again, destroying the popcorn wagon, basket shop, spice shop, bottle shop, mystery shack and pottery shop.
In the wake of the 1890 fire, every fifth building was constructed from adobe to serve as a firebreak and in 1997, the pottery shop stopped the blaze engulfing Calico, which was once more restored.
As you might expect of a ghost town with so much history, Calico is supposedly plagued by the spirits of old inhabitants. The last marshal of Calico, who died in 1979, is said to patrol a town boardwalk. Equipped with a white beard and a ready wave, he has a marvellously appropriate name: Tumbleweed Harris.
