Calico Ghost Town

On our way to Vegas, we planned for a short stopover at Calico Ghost Town.  Calico prospered during the 1880s when mining silver was lucrative.  However when silver lost its charm, the town folks packed up and moved out.  Leaving behind Calico, and turning it into a Ghost Town.

This small town has been commissioned by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to be California's Silver Rush Ghost Town.  So almost all buildings that we saw were authentic, true as it was in the 1880s. 

We had lunch at one of the cowboy bars in Calico and MX was thrilled to get her hands to smell like lemons when she got to squeeze lemon into my tea. 

She also had tons of fun shelling the big bucket of peanuts and tossing the shells on the floor. 

I asked the server if it was the norm back in the olden days to toss peanut shells onto the floor and she said that it wasn't the case back then.  The floors used to be covered by sawdust and she has no idea why sawdust became peanut shells.

 After lunch, we walked to the nearby school house.  The school was really tiny.  There was only one room in the building.  Education wasn't important back then and boys were usually pulled out from school to help with the mines while girls helped out at home.

We tried panning for gold... and got to keep what we panned in a glass bottle.

The Hubs and I have been to the states several times and visiting a Ghost Town had been on our list but we just didn't get down to stopping at one.  This time, we decided that we should visit one with MX in tow.