Calico is a ghost town and former mining town in San Bernardino
County, California, United States. Located in the Calico Mountains of
the Mojave Desert region of Southern California, it was founded in
1881 as a silver mining town, and today has been converted into a
county park named Calico Ghost Town. Located off Interstate 15, it
lies 3 miles (4.8 km) from Barstow and 3 miles from Yermo. Giant
letters spelling CALICO can be seen on the Calico Peaks behind the
ghost town from the freeway. Walter Knott purchased Calico in the
1950s, architecturally restoring all but the five remaining original
buildings to look as they did in the 1880s. Calico received California
Historical Landmark #782, and in 2005 was proclaimed by then-Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger to be California's Silver Rush Ghost Town.In
1881 four prospectors were leaving Grapevine Station (present day
Barstow, California) for a mountain peak to the northeast. Describing
the peak as "calico-colored", the peak, the mountain range to which it
belonged, and the town that followed were all called Calico. The four
prospectors discovered silver in the mountain and opened the Silver
King Mine, which was California's largest silver producer in the
mid-1880s. A post office was established in early 1882, and the Calico
Print, a weekly newspaper, started publishing. The town soon supported
three hotels, five general stores, a meat market, bars, brothels, and
three restaurants and boarding houses. The county established a school
district and a voting precinct. The town also had a deputy sheriff and
two constables, two lawyers and a justice of the peace, five
commissioners, and two doctors. There was also a Wells Fargo office
and a telephone and telegraph service. At its height of silver
production during 1883 and 1885, Calico had over 500 mines and a
population of 1,200 people. Local badmen were buried in the Boot Hill
cemetery.The discovery of the borate mineral colemanite in the Calico
mountains a few years after the settlement of the town also helped
Calico's fortunes, and in 1890 the estimated population of the town
was 3,500, with nationals of China, England, Ireland, Greece, France,
and the Netherlands, as well as Americans living there. In the same
year, the Silver Purchase Act was enacted and drove down the price of
silver. By 1896, its value had decreased to $0.57 per troy ounce, and
Calico's silver mines were no longer economically viable. The post
office was discontinued in 1898, and the school closed not long after.
By the turn of the century, Calico was all but a ghost town, and with
the end of borax mining in the region in 1907 the town was completely
abandoned.[citation needed] Many of the original buildings were moved
to Barstow, Daggett and Yermo.An attempt to revive the town was made
in about 1915, when a cyanide plant was built to recover silver from
the unprocessed Silver King Mine's deposits. Walter Knott and his wife
Cordelia, founders of Knott's Berry Farm, were homesteaded at Newberry
Springs around this time, and Knott helped build the redwood cyanide
tanks for the plant. Calico, San Bernardino County, California Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter