Calico Ghost Town

Jill's Journal: From 1881 to 1896, Calico was a booming silver mining and borate mineral town. A peak population of about 1,200 people, mostly miners, called the high desert hilly location home at one time. Over 500 mines were in operation, as well as 22 saloons and a bustling red light district.

When silver prices dropped, Calico became a ghost of its former self and the majority of it was abandoned. In 1951, Walter A. Knott of Southern California’s Knott’s Berry Farm fame stepped in. Just five of the original buildings were able to be saved and restored from the boomtown days. But using old photographs, Knott replicated and rebuilt much of the rest of the town on still-existing foundations. In 1966, Knott donated Calico to California’s San Bernardino County.

These days, Calico feels more like a theme park than a ghost town and can’t be confused with an authentic ghost town like Bodie. Instead, Calico has been carefully rebuilt to appear old (although some of the ruins do remain and many mine entrances are still visible). Most of the replicated buildings are air-conditioned and filled to the brim with shops and food and anything else that will appeal to tourists. But even so, it is, oh, so very, very fun! We're having a ball here.

Get Your Kicks on Route 66

Jill's Journal: Barstow (California), located about halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, is not the most attractive town in the country or the state or even the county. I don’t say this too often, but it’s hard for us to find much to like about the town. It reminds me somewhat of Crescent City, also in California but 760 miles northwest of here in the extreme northern part of the state. Barstow is in the desert and Crescent City is on the ocean, but both are run-down, medium-sized towns that have clearly seen better days. We’ve seen plenty of rough “characters” milling about downtown in both spots that made me double-check the car doors were locked. Both also appear to have big homeless populations. And neither one is a place we’d feel safe loitering about during the evening hours (or the daylight ones, for that matter).

BUT, Barstow does have something that ranks high on the coolness scale. Historic Route 66 runs right through the town, right down Main Street.

And in the 1911 Harvey House, a historic rail depot and hotel complex from a bygone time, is the Route 66 Mother Road Museum. The museum is small, but it has several photographs and a few artifacts all related to Route 66.

Ahhh, Route 66. Now those must have been the days to really take a road trip. We take it for granted these days that we can drive to just about any spot in the country and do it relatively quickly. Back in the 1920s, when Route 66 got its start, it was one of the first U.S. highways and stretched from Chicago all the way to Los Angeles. The "open road" was a new concept. Route 66 must have represented freedom and adventure to people whose travels, as a general rule, had previously been limited to the nearest town.

“…and they came in to 66 from tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads, 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.”
--John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

20 Mule Team Borax

Jill's Journal: In what really, truly appears to be the middle of nowhere – deep in the Mojave Desert in Boron, California -- is one of the largest-known deposits of borate ore (or borax) in the world. Boron’s deposit was discovered in 1925. When mining operations began here in 1927, it was so significant that virtually all other borate operations in the U.S. were halted.

The company, (20 Mule Team) Borax, which operates the mine extracts 12,000 tons of this mineral every day and supplies almost half of the world’s needs.

Ancient civilizations used borax too. The Egyptians used it in mummification and the Romans used it in glassmaking. Erika used it in an experiment earlier this year and has thought it was really cool stuff ever since. When she found out her beloved Ancient Egyptians used borax thousands of years ago, well, now she’ll be a fan for life.

The grounds of Borax are absolutely massive, numbering in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of acres. By the way, Borax (capitalized) is the name of the company and borax (lower-case) is the name of the mineral.

This is Borax’s gargantuan processing center from a great distance away. The open-pit mine is immediately to the right.

Although Borax has been mining here for more than 80 years, more than half of the ore still remains in the deposit.

The girls got cozy with a sample of borate ore at the Visitor Center.

This mineral is used in agriculture (particularly fertilizers), ceramics, detergents, fiber glass, glass, flame retardants, wood treatment, LCDs (flat-screen televisions and computers), and so much more.

Here’s a few examples of places borates are used in each and every modern-day home. On a completely different note, Borax also sponsored the longest-running serial in American history – first on radio and then on television – Death Valley Days, which was closely tied to Borax's history in the region. The 40-year-long show launched the careers of stars like Clint Eastwood, Carroll O’Connor, and Ronald Reagan.

Again from a great distance away, one can see the open-pit mine (the largest in California). The 240-ton trucks we saw working looked like ants. This mine is 2 1/2 miles long…

…1 1/2 miles wide…

…and up to 800 feet deep.

Borax, the company, started with the discovery of borate deposits in Death Valley in 1872 (more than 50 years before Boron’s deposit was found). There was one problem: Death Valley had some of the most forbidding territory on Planet Earth. Even worse, it was 162 miles from the mines at Furnace Creek in Death Valley to the nearest railroad point in Mojave. Of course, there was not a sign of habitation anywhere along the trail and the temperatures were usually over 120 degrees in the summer.

As a solution, Borax built special wagons (each holding one railcar-load) to haul the borates out of Death Valley. Two loaded wagons fashioned together (along with a 1,200-gallon water tank to supply needs for the 10-day journey) weighed 36 1/2 tons. They were so heavy that teams of 20 mules were recruited for each haul.

This is a set of the original wagons.

Remember that Death Valley isn’t just a valley floor, but is surrounded by forbidding mountains on all sides. These mule teams must have been quite a sight, especially as they navigated narrow mountain passes. Imagine the skill required as they swung through curves. To negotiate the curves, some of the mules were required to leap over the chain and pull at an angle going away from the curve, sidestepping all the time, while the others simultaneously pulled straight. Each of the spots on the team had special duties. Amazing. Without their cooperation, the wagons would have been lost over cliffs.

The mules were trained to each answer to their own names and follow verbal commands. The driver, or “skinner,” had one rein of sorts, a 120-foot long “jerk” line which ran through the harnesses of the 10 nigh (or left-hand side) mules. The skinner rode the “nigh-wheeler,” or the left-hand mule at the very back of the team, so he could also operate the brake on the front wagon. The “swamper,” his assistant, sat on the rear wagon to operate that brake. (Technically, the two “mules” in the very back of the team were not mules at all, but draft horses as these two needed to be the strongest. Erika noticed this immediately; it took the rest of us a little longer and the help of a sign to figure it out!).

The lead mules wore these bells to warn other teams that might be approaching on the narrow roads. Although traffic was light (Borax had just five sets of wagons in constant operation), meeting another 20-mule team on a mountain pass would provide all kinds of logistical problems.

These days, really, really big trucks are used to move the mineral instead of mules and wagons. The girls are standing in a 1986 tire, from when Borax used 190-ton trucks with 11-foot tires. Now they use 240-ton trucks with 15-foot tires.

She’s Six!

Jill's Journal: After months of anticipation, our precious Madelyn turned six today. She woke up with the biggest grin on her face and it stayed there all day long.

Her birthday checklist of requests was so simple that it was impossible not to meet them all:

*Day off from school to play with presents. Check.
*Climb the “mountain” next to our campsite. Check.
*Go to two separate parks with playgrounds. Check.
*Pancakes covered in a funny face for dinner. Check.
*No cake, but candles in a bowl of birthday ice cream instead. Check.
*Go to bed wearing tomorrow’s clothes instead of wearing pajamas. Check.

Funny, funny girl. And actually, as I think about it, that’s a pretty fantastic list. If we were all so easy to please, the world would be a far more contented place, wouldn’t it?

Happy birthday to a very special little girl.

Sleeping with Ghosts

Jill's Journal: Tonight we’re staying in a ghost town. Yes, really.

Not just figuratively (this particular campground is deserted with the exception of one other camper), but literally, as we’re on the site of California’s best-known ghost town.

Calico Ghost Town is located in the area around the Mojave Desert. It may have been booming in the late 1800s and may be busy these days with modern-day tourists during daylight hours, but it’s eerily quiet and feels exactly like a ghost town should at night. The old Calico cemetery even overlooks the campground. If chains start rattling, we’re outta here! :)

Goodbye for Now

Jill's Journal: Tomorrow morning we officially leave Grandpa and Beppy’s, more than a few days later than originally scheduled and then rescheduled. The girls are not happy about this. As a general rule, they’ve learned to be adventurous, but this is where they draw the line. It warms my heart to see how attached they are to their grandparents, but it certainly doesn’t make it easy to leave. I’ve told them we’ll see their grandparents again in five or six months, but somehow that doesn’t seem to make it any easier…

For their part, Grandpa and Beppy have been great sports during our time here (thank you so much!), but (even though they deny it) surely they’ll enjoy the peace and quiet after we go. Rob and I may be half deaf by now, but we still realize three little girls are so very NOISY!

T Minus Three Days

Jill's Journal: All little kids look forward to their birthdays, but no one in our family looks forward to hers more than Madelyn. She’s been counting down for months. Every day she tells us exactly how many days are left until she turns six. We’re down to just three days (three excruciatingly-long days in her book) until the big day.

When it worked out to take her birthday pictures just a couple of days early, she was only too pleased to oblige. You can’t always choose your photographers carefully when you’re on the road or when it’s this close to the busy photography season of Christmas (and this particular photographer must have left her personality at home today). But Madelyn is a pro. In the five or 10 minutes it took to snap 20 pictures, Madelyn happily posed and smiled as if she does this every day of her life.

This one is my favorite because it’s her. I see this expression all the time.

Aren’t these shoes the greatest? She’s pretty proud of them. We may have found them on the discount rack, but they were made for her.

We love, love, love this almost 6-year-old little girl.

She may keep us on our toes every minute of every day, but the amount of joy she brings into our lives is irreplaceable.

56 People and Counting

Jill's Journal: These two people…

…begat these four people…

…whose combined families now number 56 people.

The girls’ great grandparents – my Mom’s parents – bravely emigrated to the U.S. from Holland after World War II. Their four surviving children gave them 13 grandkids. If they were still here today, they would surely be enjoying the 24 great grandchildren those grandkids have given them so far. In just the next six months, their 11th grandchild is getting married and two more great grandchildren are due, so the number will undoubtedly grow and continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

A family of 56 people from one humble, resilient, and amazing couple…my grandparents would definitely be proud and probably a little astonished at how the family has grown if they were still here. The entire group gets together every single year, without fail, for a Christmas party. We’re the only ones in the whole group who don’t live in California, so we usually miss out. We last made the party in 2004, when Erika was just a baby and before our other two were born. But we made it today and so did every other single member of the extended family save one. I think the girls were a little surprised and delighted to find they have 2nd cousins – 21 of them, to be exact – in this branch of the family!

‘Tis the Season

Jill's Journal: After being on the road so long, it feels strange to be in one spot for two weeks with no sightseeing going on. We'll be on the move again soon, but in the meantime, the girls certainly are enjoying their grandparents and the memories they’re making are just as important as all the other stuff we see. Besides, when else would they get a chance to make Christmas cookies with Beppy?

I actually got quite a kick out of watching the whole cookie-decorating process from a distance…three kids in the kitchen may have been a little more chaotic than my Mom was expecting. I think my girls “made a memory,” but I know my Mom did!