And, no, that's not the fabric, but the little ghost town between post and Barstow just off the highway. Zach and I went there soon after we arrived here, as it's the nearest 'site to see' where we now live.
If you look closely at the building above, it also says Calico, across the upper part of the wall. That particular house was actually built in the 1950's, to show a possible construction method of houses at the mine. Those are bottles embedded in the house walls to give it support and insulation. It's the desert, so wood was (is!) scarce and therefore expensive, so miners, who weren't going to be there long and didn't want to invest in a more costly house, used whatever they could to construct their houses. The bottle remnants were one method. At least, all this is according to the sign on the building:
See? :)
You can really see in this picture below (the view from the town looking across the mine entrances) where the town and the surrounding hills received their name. The land was very mineral-rich, and this gives the ground color. Copper-laden mineral, for example, create those green patches. The hills around the town are the Calico Hills, and that's what gives the town its name: someone at some point thought that the mottled colors across the hillside looked like calico fabric.
And if you're wondering what the town was during it's prime, it was a mining town. A lot of those minerals giving the hills their color were worth something. There were a great many mining towns around Barstow and up north into Death Valley, that were once mined for silver and borate minerals, among other things. But, as the mines dried up, so too went the town, nowadays just a historic detour off I-15.
1 comment:
And Calico had the only mail dog in the nation! He took mail from town to the mines in the area. He had a regular route and brought mail back to town again. I thought that was so cool!
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