San Bernardino County's Mojave Silver Mining Ghost Town
36600 Ghost Town Road, Yermo, CA 92398
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Per-vehicle entrance fee to Calico Ghost Town Regional Park; mine tour, train ride, and special-event programming priced separately.
Access
Limited Access
Steep desert hillside with dirt streets and wooden boardwalks
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1881 · 1881 Silver Discovery · Calico Mining District · Walter Knott Restoration · California Historical Landmark 782 · Silver Rush Ghost Town
Silver was discovered in the Calico Mountains on April 6, 1881, by a group of prospectors who staked the Silver King Mine and founded the town that became Calico. Within two years Calico had grown to a population of approximately 1,200 with more than five hundred mining claims operating in the surrounding hills. At its peak in 1883-1885 the Calico District produced roughly eighty percent of the silver mined in California, by some state-mineralogist accounts of the period.
Alongside silver, the surrounding desert yielded substantial quantities of borax. Over the next three decades the Calico mines produced an estimated $86 million in silver and $45 million in borax. The Silver Purchase Act of 1890 and the subsequent collapse of silver prices through the early 1890s rendered the district uneconomical, and by 1896 most operations had ceased. The town was effectively abandoned by 1898.
Walter Knott, founder of Knott's Berry Farm, purchased the Calico townsite in 1951 and began a multi-decade restoration. Knott modeled the work on his Knott's Berry Farm Ghost Town and intentionally reconstructed several of the principal commercial buildings in a slightly stylized form. In 1966 Knott donated the property to San Bernardino County, which has operated Calico Ghost Town Regional Park since.
In 2005 Calico was designated California Historical Landmark 782, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed it California's official Silver Rush Ghost Town. The park operates year-round, with peak visitation during Calico Days in October and the Civil War Reenactment in February.
Sources
Calico's reputation as a reportedly active site is hard to disentangle from the park's intentional ghost-town programming. The Knott restoration in the 1950s and 1960s included some theatrical elements, and current park programming includes seasonal ghost tours and Halloween-themed events. Visitors should approach the reported phenomena with awareness of this layered context.
The most-cited focal points are the Maggie Mine tour, where visitors describe phantom footsteps and the sound of distant pickaxe work beyond the tour route; the schoolhouse, where unexplained child laughter is the most consistently reported phenomenon; and the Calico Cemetery, where the small number of children's graves contribute to a quieter atmospheric weight. The Hank's Hotel building and the False Front merchant row are also regular subjects of visitor accounts.
The town does not assign reported phenomena to specific named entities in its interpretive material, which is appropriate given the difficulty of corroborating individual mining-camp deaths. The cemetery records confirm approximately twenty-five burials, including several children, and visitors should approach the grounds as a historical burial place rather than a stage set.
Walk the partially restored mining town: the Maggie Mine tour, the Mystery Shack, the schoolhouse, and the False Front merchant row. Train rides and gunfight reenactments operate on a seasonal schedule. The Knott family began the restoration in 1951; the town is now San Bernardino County Regional Park.
Walk the short trail to the Calico Cemetery on the hill above the town. The cemetery holds approximately twenty-five graves of miners, residents, and a handful of children who died during the silver-rush years.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Gatlinburg, TN
Great Smoky Mountains National Park preserves 522,427 acres of southern Appalachian terrain across Tennessee and North Carolina. The land was the heart of the Cherokee Nation before forced removal in 1838 along what became the Trail of Tears, and home to Appalachian Scots-Irish and English settler communities through the early twentieth century. Congress authorized the park in 1926; it was formally dedicated by Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 2, 1940.
Centralia, PA
Centralia is a near-ghost town in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, atop an underground coal-mine fire that has been burning since May 1962. The borough's population fell from 1,000 in 1980 to five residents in 2020. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania condemned the borough in 1992 and acquired most properties by eminent domain. The fire is estimated to be capable of burning for another 250 years.
Campo, CA
Lake Morena is a reservoir in the Laguna Mountains of eastern San Diego County, constructed by the Otay Water District and completed in 1912. The lake sits in a remote valley at roughly 3,000 feet elevation and is managed today by San Diego County Parks. The 1916 Hatfield flood — a rainmaking attempt that resulted in catastrophic flooding across San Diego County — affected waterways in the region.