We were indeed camped right next to the Ghost Town, however the weather now interfered with our plans. A storm was blowing in. Only wind, but expected to be up to 60 m.p.h gusts. Looking at the weather charts it seemed that the Jet Stream had taken an unexpectedly Southern route, down the west coast, crossing the Mojave Desert and New Mexico and swinging back North up the Great Plains. This meant havoc for the North and West of USA. The west coast got cold. The Southern states (thats us) got gales, the Rockies Mid West and Northern states as far as the Great Lakes got snow. Warm wet air sucked in from the gulf, meeting the cold dry air sucked down from Canada met and dropping up to 30 inches of snow. It won’t last long, but it is big.
By Monday afternoon we were prepared to brave the wind and go up to visit the ghost town which had originally been a Sliver Mining Community. It was very twee, but poorly described. We then noticed that some of the buildings were not original 1880’s. We eventually found out that a guy called Walter Knott bought the town in 1950 and was determined to restore it to its original condition as ghost town, Walter Knott is well know for his amusement park in Anaheim, Knotts Berry Farm, right next to Disneyland. Which incidentally started as a farm in 1920, where Walter developed the Boysenberry. The wayside farm stall then opened a chicken restaurant, which developed entertainment bits, which then became what is claimed to be the first theme park in 1947m, complete with its own ghost town. Its history has some fascinating parallels with Calico and also many of the activities and places that we have seen on our travels in the West. Read about it here……. Knotts Berry Farm History
The county of San Bernardino was given the park and have kept it going ever since, so really it is only a pseudo ghost town with many buildings form the 1950’s, still a good bit of fun with the train, the mine, the main street, the sheriffs office etc. we then went down to Peggy Sue’s Diner for dinner.
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