Calico

It was a short drive today from Calico CA> where we spent the night in a campround on the property of a ghost town called Calico. This morning we had breakfast in town, then did a tour of the place. Quite a nice spot. It had been an operating mine area until the price of silver dropped to a point where it wasn't worth while bringing it out anymore. Two brothers worked at making a series of tunnels of more than 500' through solid rock, for about 15 years and found nothing. A couple of years later, after the brothers had finally given up, a young boy came across a "bubble" of rock....above ground. This eventually turnedinto a "gloy hole" resulting in more than $65,000.00 worth of siver being extracted. Mr. Knott, of Knott Berry Farms bought the property a number of years ago and after the restoration was complete, gave it to the county, who now operate and maintain it. We then drove to Boron CA. which has the largest open pit mine in the USA, mining Borax. We were not able to take the anticipated tour because of labour prolems at the mine. Tomorrow ( Fri) we will cross the San Andreas Fault. It will be a longer drive of about 220 miles.