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The news of pure silver the size of fists spread like wildfire throughout the mining world and the stampede was on. A Wells Fargo office, telephone and telegraph service were soon added. The school house doubled as a church on Sundays and a Sunday school class on weeknights. There were also five commissioners and two doctors. A deputy and two constables were employed, as well as two lawyers and a justice of the peace. It had a school house and a voting precinct, along with a literary society and even a dancing school. By 1885, Calico began to look almost civilized. The town soon supported three hotels, five general stores, a meat market, 22 saloons, brothels, three restaurants and boarding houses. These were probably merchants, as most of the miners were single men.Ī post office was established in early 1882, and the Calico Print, a weekly newspaper, started publishing. “It ain’t gonna be no Boona Vista, nor nothin’ o’ the sort! Look at the colors in them rocks! I say, call her Calico!”Ĭalico families enjoying a picnic. Some of the early townsfolk wanted to call it “Silver Gulch” or “Buena Vista”, which almost came to pass, but a notable man about town named Joe “Shorty” Joiner who wore a swallow-tail coat and had a beard that hung to his knees wouldn’t hear of it. The mountains around the town earned the title of “Calico Mountains”, but other names were floated for the town itself. But initially there was some dispute on what to call it. King, the Sheriff of San Bernardino County, who grubstaked “financed” the claim., The Silver King would become California’s largest silver producer in the late 1880s. John King was the uncle of Walter Knott, who worked the mine in his younger days and later became the founder of Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park. The four prospectors discovered a large silver deposit on the side of a “calico-colored” mountain, which would become known as the Silver King Mine (King Mine), named after John C. In 1881 four prospectors were leaving Grapevine Station (now known as Barstow, California) for a mountain peak to the northeast. Most were silver mines, but borax was also mined here. There are over 500 mines in and around Calico. They kept the town as authentic as possible, and that's the way I like it. In other words, there are open mines all over the place. In fact there’s a line of small print in the brochure they hand you which states that in exchange for them allowing you the "privilege" of entering their property, you won’t hold them responsible if you get killed. In 2005 the State Senate and State Assembly listed Calico as the Official State Silver Rush Ghost Town, while Bodie became the Official State Gold Rush Ghost Town.Ĭalico is not your average theme park. It’s not in Los Angeles County, but occasionally I wander to nearby counties to visit spectacular sites such as this. Using old photos from the town he once mined in, Walter Knott authentically rebuilt many of these structures.Ĭalico is such an interesting ghost town with such a rich history that I’ve decided to devote two pages to it, Calico Ghost Town and Calico Mines. thirteen miles from Barstow in the small community of Yermo Gold was mined from the Total Wreck (Burcham) Mine from the 1930s until 1941. During the early 1930s a small operation called the Zenda Gold Mining Company mined here for silver. In 1917 cyanide was used to recover silver from the Silver King mine dumps.
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B orate production kept the town alive, even through the panic of 1906. Calico's population boomed, but by the mid 1890's silver had lost its value and the population began to decline. Years of Operation: In 1881 California's largest silver strike was discovered here. Although most of these mines have stood dormant for a century or more, there is a strong possibility that the enormous quantities of low grade silver ore present at Calico will one day be mined again. The Total Wreck (Burcham) Mine was mined for gold from 1930-1941. Tiny rock houses built into the cliffs above the town provided some relief from blazing hot temperatures.